Over the past few years I have reported how The IVA Council (IVAC) have been  targeting vulnerable debtors and borrowers who had entered into individual Voluntary Arrangements, (IVAs) by obtaining  their details from the court’s register and the  Insolvency Service website.

Some of the companies mentioned above were linked to IVAC or similar official sounding trading names and I applaud the action now taken by The Insolvency Service and the Office of Fair Trading in revoking their consumer credit licences.

It is believed that IVAC sent thousands of letters to unsuspecting borrowers in which they claimed that the consumer had been mis-sold their IVA, citing that they would have been better off had they gone bankrupt. Many were then advised to stop paying into the IVA, thus causing the IVA to fail.

Once the IVA failed the consumer would be back where they were prior to the approval of the IVA and under pressure from lenders for payments they could not afford. Some consumers were then offered alternative debt solutions, many of which were not appropriate and of course, requiring the payment of another fee.

IVAC even went so far as to write to a number of Insolvency Practitioners, these are the highly regulated professional individuals who set up and supervise IVAs, accusing them of mis-selling the IVA.

The Insolvency Service and Office of Fair Trading have revealed through their investigations that the IVAC was a marketing tool to generate leads for UKB and it was yet another way of making money at the expense of desperate and often vulnerable consumers.

More information on IVAs can be found on the following links -

What is an IVA? / IVA Pros & Cons / IVA Information