Our Approach and Pledge

IVAorg CIC is a Community Interest Company - a Not-for-Profit company with the clear objective of providing free advice and counselling relevant to the relief of poverty amongst persons living in the United Kingdom.

IVAorg CIC is not established or conducted for private gain and any surplus we generate or assets owned are used principally for the benefit of the community.

Our Mission

Our mission is clear and simple.

We want to improve outcomes for people who enter into an IVAs.

And we believe the best way to achieve this is to protect them from receiving poor or misleading advice.

We felt there was a clear need for a more suitable approach to be adopted within the IVA sector that prioritises the needs of both IVA customers and their creditors above the commercial considerations of the insolvency practice.

The Issues At Hand

Current industry IVA failure rates indicate that 1 in 4 IVAs fail to reach a successful conclusion.

Too many IVAs fail as a result of poor advice.

Applicants are far too often advised to enter into IVAs when a more appropriate option would have been available to them.

When this happens, we believe responsibility rests largely on the shoulders of the advisor who suggested the IVA as being the right option in the first place, when they should have known better.

Commission led advice

And we believe that the delivery of poor advice, such as this, is often being driven by advisers earning commission for advising an IVA, rather than 'doing the right thing'.

And we believe this sort of practice needs to be completely eradicated from debt advice sector.

Poor care and attention

Other IVAs fail because too little care and attention was give to seeking an understanding of the financial circumstances of the customer, on which the IVA was being based.

Rushing through this crucial part of the application process will often lead to an IVA being built on an unrealistic or an unsustainable grounds.

This is particularly poor practice, because the consequences of an IVA failing can be extremely damaging.

The Crux

The IVA is a legally binding agreement by which someone can become debt free.

However, debt freedom can only be achieved when the IVA successfully completes.

When an IVA fails to complete - then agrement is canceled.

Effects of a failed IVA

The impact is mostly felt by the customer.

They become responsible for their original debts once more, with much of the money they paid into the IVA being taken to cover IVA fees rather than being used to repay their debts.

Secondly, the creditors lose out as they have to pick up debt collection with the customer once more, having perhaps waited months to receive some debt repayments that never materialised.

But in contrast, when an IVA fails, the insolvency practice still gets paid for the work they have done whilst the IVA was running.

Even if the IVA fails through no fault of the customer, the insolvency fees still get paid.

Our Fresh Approach

We want to embrace the principle that we, as an insolvency practice, should have a vested interest in our customer's IVAs reaching a successful outcome.

And, in so doing, provide each customer the best chance of successfully completing their IVA and becoming debt free.

Advice you can trust

We want you to be confident in the advice we provide.

All our advisors are extremely experienced and are motivated to help you find the correct solution, whatever that may be.

• We never incentivise our advisors to promote an IVA.
• We never pay commission for the advice they give.

IVAorg Support

Our not-for-profit status allows also us to invest in essential customer support which, in turn, helps prevent many IVAs from failing for avoidable reasons.

And we back this up with our unique social pledge

The pledge represents ethos behind the whole IVAorg team and the difference we are trying to make.

Our Pledge

It states...

Should your IVA fail to complete successfully through no fault of your own, we pledge the fees you’ve paid for our services will be used to reduce your debt to maximum effect.

This has the effect of leaving you no worse off for having tried to complete an IVA, even if it subsequently failed.

It also means that IVAorg is not rewarded if your IVA fails.

Measuring the difference

There are huge differences in the successful outcomes you can expect between different IVA providers.