Unlike the £15,000 or £20,000 minimum set by some of our competitors, ClearDebt can propose IVAs for people with unsecured debts of around £5,000. Our IVA fees (which are paid out of the monthly contribution you make and approved by your creditors) are often lower than our competitors, making it more likely your creditors won’t seek to vary your IVA or vote against it.

Is an IVA right for me: Do I meet the criteria?

There are a number of criteria you must meet if you are to propose an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA):

1. You must be technically insolvent. This means that you must be unable to pay all of your debts as they fall due for payment, or that you have insufficient assets to repay your debts and liabilities.
2. If you wish to propose an IVA with an interim order (usually unnecessary for a consumer IVA, but sometimes helpful for self-employed people) you must not have proposed one within the past 12 months.
3. You must have someone willing to act as your nominee. This person must be a licensed insolvency practitioner who is regulated by one of the Recognised Professional Bodies. ClearDebt Limited is a firm with its own licensed insolvency practitioners and we will deal with every aspect of your IVA case from start to finish. We do not just collect your information and then refer it, for a fee, to a panel of insolvency practitioners (which is what many other debt management providers do).

ClearDebt will only put forward an IVA proposal for you if it has a realistic chance of success and you meet the criteria set out above. an IVA may be considered. More than 95% of the IVAs we put forward are approved.

What is most important when working out if proposing an IVA is right for you or not is whether the proposal is fair to both your creditors and to you. In our experience this means that you must be able to make a minimum monthly contribution of £160 over, usually, a maximum five-year period. It’s worth noting that there can be negative consequences to IVAs and you can read more about these on our Frequently Asked Questions about IVAs page.

In many, but not all, cases you will owe more than £10,000 on credit cards and unsecured loans and, possibly, arrears of rent and mortgage. Your mortgage and rent payments going forward are included in the living allowance you are allowed to retain, so your occupation of your home should not be threatened as long as you don’t fall further behind.

Try our IVA calculator now to estimate how much your monthly payments could be on an IVA.