UPDATE 10 May 2021 The Insolvency Service has announced the new limits that will be introduced for Debt Relief Orders (DROs) from 29 June 2021. These are: the total debt allowable in a DRO goes up from £20,000 to £30,000. the level of "surplus income" after paying your bills and everyday expenses has been increased from £50 to £75 per month. an increase in the general assets you … [Read more...]
Insolvency News & Policy articles
Here are all the Debt Camel articles about what is new and changing in bankruptcy, DROs and IVAs. They cover everything from news about IVA firms to statistics and regulatory changes from the Insolvency Service. These articles are mainly of interest to debt specialists.
If you want practical advice on choosing between the different insolvency options, or about what happens when you have gone bankrupt or are in a DRO or IVA look at the following:
Major changes for thousands of customers with Aperture & Vanguard IVAs
In Autumn 2020 two of the largest IVA firms have recently announced the latest in a long line of customer transfers within the industry: all Aperture's open IVAs have been sold to Jarvis Insolvency; and Vanguard's open IVAs will be administered by Ebenegate. UPDATE: In February 2021 Jarvis rebranded and it now calls itself Debt Movement. Sale of Aperture's IVAs to Jarvis On 5 … [Read more...]
Coronavirus & the reform of Personal Insolvency in England
This article builds on the arguments I put forward in Coronavirus – how the debt advice sector should be planning, looking at one area that needs to be tackled urgently - personal insolvency. Coronavirus will cause a large increase in the numbers of people who should choose insolvency over the next couple of years. I am not trying to predict how many, but it is likely to be large enough to … [Read more...]
Holding Money & Debt up to the Light: the Case for Transparency in the Standard Financial Statement
This is a guest post by Dr Joseph Spooner, Assistant Professor of Insolvency Law at the LSE and the author of Bankruptcy – the Case for Relief in an Economy of Debt. He had previously worked at the Law Reform Commission of Ireland, where his papers influenced the enactment of the Irish Personal Insolvency Act 2012. Systems for addressing difficulties of over-indebted households in England … [Read more...]
Aperture – no longer taking new IVAs from June 2019
UPDATE on 5 September 202o, Aperture sold its 25,000 open IVAs to Jarvis. See Major changes for thousands of customers with Aperture & Vanguard IVAs for details. Aperture has told many debt advisers it will not take referrals for Individual Voluntary Arrangements after the end of June 2019. The debt advice firms received an email saying: I write to inform you that Aperture Debt … [Read more...]
Q1 2019 – IVA numbers – the upward trend continues
On 30 April the Insolvency Service published the personal insolvency statistics for the first quarter of 2019. Comparing this quarter to the last quarter of 2018: bankruptcy and DRO numbers were about the same; IVA numbers dropped from 22,943 in Q4 2018 to 20,325 in Q1 2019. The upward trend of IVAs continues It is a mistake to make too much of this fall in IVA numbers, because the … [Read more...]
IVAs in 2018 – numbers jump and so do failure rates
On 29 January 2019 the Insolvency Service published two sets of statistics for 2018: Insolvency Statistics: October to December 2018 Individual Voluntary Arrangements: Outcome Status 1990 – 2017. Here are what I think are the three most interesting points. 1. IVA numbers again rose faster than bankruptcy & DROs In 2018 IVAs increased by 20%. Already the most common type of … [Read more...]
Making bankruptcy look more scary than it is
It's natural to feel worried about bankruptcy, but some websites set out to make it sound a lot worse than it is. Some of what they say is simply wrong. Other bits may be right but they leave out important facts, so the issue sounds more difficult than it is in practice. And it's common for problems associated with bankruptcy to be listed in detail, but very similar points … [Read more...]
FCA warns “Debt Packagers” about poor debt advice to enter IVAs
On 5 October, the FCA wrote a Dear CEO letter saying: We have undertaken a review of a small sample of debt advice provided by Debt Packager firms and are very concerned about the poor standards we have seen... The FCA then asks the CEO to review: your quality of debt advice; the firm’s identification and treatment of vulnerable customers; financial promotions, and systems and … [Read more...]
IP regulation – Insolvency Service find major problems
The Review of the monitoring and regulation of insolvency practitioners that was published by the Insolvency Service last week found evidence of many of the problems in Individual Voluntary Agreements (IVAs) that I and other free-sector debt advisers have been talking about for several years. Although it is often not specific about what has to be done, the report is clear that change has to … [Read more...]
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