This explains what an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) actually is and how it works.

What is an INDIVIDUAL VOLUNTARY ARRANGEMENT (IVA)?

An IVA is a formal agreement between you and your creditors where you will come to an arrangement with people you owe money to, to make reduced payments towards the total amount of your debt in order to pay off a percentage of what you owe then generally after 5 years your debt is classed as settled.

Due to its formal nature, an IVA has to be set up by a licensed professional

How does it work?

Once a decision has been made that an IVA is right for you, you will be asked questions regarding your current financial situation. Based on the information you have given, a repayment amount will be agreed with you. Once proposals have been drawn up you will need to check and sign these and return them to your IP.

An application may then be made to the court for an Interim Order. Once this is in place, no creditors will be able to take legal action against you. A creditor meeting will be arranged to which you should attend.

For an IVA to be approved, creditors will be called upon to vote either for or against the arrangement. If only one creditor votes "for" the IVA, it will be approved. However, if only one creditor votes against it and they represent less than 25% of your total debt, the meeting will be suspended for a later date and other creditors who did not vote will be called upon for their vote.

If the creditor who voted against the IVA represents more than 25% of the total debt you owe it will fail. This is because an IVA will only ever be approved if 75% in monetary value is voted for. If any of the creditors don't vote, it is assumed that they will vote FOR the IVA.

The IVA will be legally binding. As long as you keep up the repayments, when the term of your agreement is finished, you will be free from these debts regardless of how much has been paid off.

During the period of your arrangement your financial situation will be reviewed regularly to see if there has been any change in your circumstances.

It is very important that consumers do not confuse an IVA with a Debt Management Plan, which is not legally binding.

Most IVA cases are based around one, affordable, monthly, payment, over a period of 60 months.

An IVA proposal has to be prepared by a licensed Insolvency Practitioner (IP) who then presents it to creditors at a creditors meeting.

In the case of a consumer IVA it is unusual for any creditors or their representatives to attend the creditors meeting as most prefer to vote by fax or by post.

The rules of an IVA state that providing 75% (in value terms) of those that have voted, vote to accept the proposals (with or without modifications) then the IVA is agreed and becomes legally binding on all other parties whether they voted or not.

When an IVA is accepted the IP's role becomes that of supervisor, monitoring the IVA's progress and ensuring that the terms and conditions that were agreed to at the creditors meeting are properly adhered to.

It is the debtor's responsibility to pay the agreed payments to the IP who will then ensure that these payments are distributed to all creditors on a pro-rata basis in accordance with terms and until the successful completion of the IVA. It is in the debtors own interest to maintain their payments as failure to pay will almost certainly result in the failure of the IVA.

Upon the successful completion of the IVA the debtor will be considered debt free even though they may not have actually paid off all of their debts in full. Any outstanding balances are written off (known as a composition of debts) and the debtor is then free to make a fresh financial start.

It is worth noting that if you do enter into an IVA with your creditors and you have an endowment policy linked to your mortgage then you may be expected to cash it in and pay the proceeds into the arrangement.

Likewise, if your property has a reasonable amount of equity then it is likely that a some of it will have to be released at sometime during the arrangement (usually the end), so it can be paid to creditors.

Drastic as this may sound it can be a deciding factor in whether an IVA is approved by creditors and a realistic way in which a debtor can retain their property.

The IVA is an extremely powerful tool enabling you to clear your debt and return to a clean financial bill of health.