IVA Transferred to another company

[beverley100]

When I went with the original company (Debt Matters) I looked at a few companies and chose them because they charged the least fees.

After the meeting of creditors, DM phoned me to advise how it went and some requests that the creditors had made, which were a jiggle round of my I&E so we would pay a bit more pm and that DM didn't take a fee. My IVA manager said that's fine and they would agree to that and if I agreed that we would go ahead on those terms and we have been in the IVA for 14 months now and not missed a payment. (Also to add that I never received any additional paperwork to this affect)

We have recently received a letter saying that the IVA has been transferred to another company (Grant Thornton).

We have just received an annual statement and I am absolutely gutted because it shows everything we have paid in. Then it shows a big list of fees and vat, which leaves about £500 left over to go towards my debts.

Does anyone know if this is a one off for the first year. I have no paperwork from the new company saying what they would be charging just their original letter saying that no changes would be made to our IVA and to carry on paying as normal.

Starting to think that going with this IVA was a big mistake because I know they are going to ask us to remortgage near the end of the 5 years and if they are taking over £2500 in fees a year that's going to be an extra £12500 we will have to take on our mortgage.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[kallis3]

I have no personal experience of this, I am sure an expert will be along to help you.

With our equity release, we have to have our house revalued in month 54 and if we can get a remortgage it has to be 85% LTV which I think is quite a standard figure but our repayments cannot be more than 50% extra of our payments to Payplan.

[MelanieGiles]

Beverley

Whether you are paying fees to the IP or not, your contributions would still be the same - as the fees are authorised and effectively paid by your creditors. But if you were led to beleive that the IP fees would be much lower than they are then I can understand some of your annoyance.

During the early year(s) of an IVA, the fees are higher as the IP will be drawing down his/her nominee fee - which covers all of the work carried out for you prior to the creditors meeting. This should have been clearly explained to you, and it ought to be properly disclosed in the IVA proposal which you agreed to and signed.

I cannot see that the level of IP fees will affect your mortgage, as the fees are drawn from the contributions you pay and are not on top.

[beverley100]

Hi, thanks for your replies.

Sorry I don't think I have explained properly but will try.

We have the equity clause where the IVA people will want us to remortgage near the end of my IVA to raise more money to give the creditors. So any extra amount raised would then be paid to my creditors on top of the £444 we pay every month for the 60 months.

Because they are taking huge chunks from what we are paying each month for their fees it will leave me with a bigger balance than what I had expected (about 21k) and this is why I am concerned as I fear I am now going to have to pay the full amount owed plus 21,100 fees (if they charge the same amount for each year).

In the 1st year of my IVA we have paid £444x11=£4,884. Our statement shows that after fees+vat there is £866 left in the pot to distribute to our creditors. (Sorry I gave the wrong figure in my 1st post as our joint IVA is on two different agreements).

I have just worked out if they charge this amount every year we would only pay £4,330 off the original debts and the IVA co would pocket £21k of our payments. This would leave us a debt balance of £48.670, which they would want us to try to raise via a re-mortgage. I know it doesn't seem right but with no paperwork to refer to I can only assume the worst.

I'm gutted as this wasn't what we agreed to with Debt Matters. Do we have any rights to terminate this IVA with this new company? We haven't signed anything saying we accept them as my IVA manager.

Hope that makes sense.

[MelanieGiles]

But they won't charge those fees every year - for the reasons I explained above. You need to re-read the terms of your IVA proposal to see what fees are proposed to be charged for the full five years.

I think a chat with your new IP would set your mind at rest over this issue.

[beverley100]

Hi, I will go and dig out the paperwork now and then phone them on Monday. But as I've not had any paperwork after the meeting of creditors (when the creditors said they would accept if the IVA manager didn't take the fees), I'm just worried that i'm going to be paying these debts off forever.