{"id":10573,"date":"2010-11-12T12:22:31","date_gmt":"2010-11-12T12:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/?p=10573"},"modified":"2019-07-31T12:25:31","modified_gmt":"2019-07-31T11:25:31","slug":"keep-iva-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/keep-iva-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"Keep IVA secret"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There are various parties to an Individual Voluntary Arrangement \n(IVA) who have to be informed about it because they have a vested \ninterest in it. These include your creditors such as banks with whom you\n have overdrafts or loans, credit card providers \u2013 unless your accounts \nare in credit, other loan providers, mortgage lenders and car HP \nproviders and so on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

If you are in arrears in payments for utilities such as water, gas or electricity or of your council tax then the relevant bodies have to be informed as well. The same applies if you have been overpaid benefits. Don\u2019t forget that your phone or mobile phone provider may also be a creditor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main concern that people have is that their family, friends, neighbours, acquaintances or employers learn about their IVA and thus learn about their financial difficulties. Many people feel embarrassment or even shame when people they know personally become aware of their predicament. Unfortunately there is no sure way to prevent such people learning that you have entered an IVA. In practice however, there are some steps you can take to minimize the risk of this happening and the most important one is to be discreet yourself. The Insolvency Practitioner (IP) and the insolvency firm with which you are dealing should also exercise discretion and ensure that they conduct all aspects of your affairs professionally and on a confidential basis. In law however, your IP has to communicate with all of your creditors at least once a year when a progress report is circulated to them regarding the conduct of your IVA. You have already provided authority to do this. Generally your family, friends, neighbours, acquaintances and employer should not become aware of your IVA unless you owe them money. If you do they have a legal right to be a creditor in your IVA and they may not be excluded. If you owe money to a family member they will have to be informed. Any business partner you may have will also be entitled to know about your IVA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Who<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How else can details of your IVA become public? Well, following \napproval of your IVA proposal by creditors, it must be listed on The \nInsolvency Service website, which is generally of interest only to those\n involved in the insolvency or credit industries. It may of course be \nlegally accessed by any member of the public and there is really no way \nto stop this happening unless the law is changed. The good news is that \npeople are largely unaware of this and are not inclined to go digging \nfor such information anyway. There is also no provision in legislation \nrequiring the publication in newspapers or periodicals of the name of \nany person who has entered into an IVA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are self-employed then your trade creditors will have to be \nnotified about your IVA as will HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) – since \npayments of tax & national insurance are usually made in arrears. If\n you have been overpaid tax credits then HMRC will also be notified \nabout your IVA since they are a creditor and because you will be obliged\n to repay the overpayment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other major category of persons who will need to be notified \nabout your IVA is anybody who owns any asset jointly with you – \nparticularly property. This would usually include your spouse or \nco-habiting partner since your IVA may have an effect on the future \nownership of joint assets. There are certain exceptional circumstances \nwhere a spouse or co-habiting partner might not need to be notified of \nyour IVA but this would be most unusual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Insolvency Service also has to be notified about your IVA but the\n court no longer has to be in England and Wales, only in Northern \nIreland. Once your creditors learn of your IVA, they may record defaults\n on your credit files which are maintained by the credit reference \nagencies such as Experian and Equifax. Unfortunately, access to and \npublication of such personal financial data relating to insolvent \nindividuals is not prohibited by the Data Protection Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, who is not notified about your IVA? The big difference between an\n IVA and Bankruptcy is that your employer will not be informed that you \nare in an IVA whereas if you become bankrupt they are informed. The \ngeneral public including your neighbours, acquaintances, relations, \nfriends and family, subject to the exceptions stated above, will not be \nproactively informed about your IVA either and although anybody may \nbecome aware of your IVA by accident or by searching the Insolvency \nService website, the fact that you are in an IVA is usually not common \nknowledge. Certainly the Insolvency Practitioner (IP) who deals with \nyour case as either Nominee or Supervisor of your IVA is duty bound to \ntreat your case in strict confidentiality and any staff employed by the \nIP in the matter are also so bound. Your IVA may not be divulged to \nthird parties without your express permission. For these reasons the \nstigma of Bankruptcy is markedly absent in an IVA and this is a \nsignificant factor as to why insolvent persons prefer to enter into an \nIVA than to go bankrupt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The main concern that people have is that their family, friends, neighbours, acquaintances or employers learn about their IVA and thus learn about their financial difficulties. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iva-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10579,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10573\/revisions\/10579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}