www.iva.co.uk

I am 20 months into an IVA - total IVA including Supervisors fees is c33000 and I pay £550 per month. I have three questions:

a) on my credit file, the creditors wrapped up in the IVA still appear as individual creditors with default figures and outstanding balances which makes my file look even worse than it is. Furthermore, my IVA is listed on the last page under court judgements without an amount next to it - is there anything that I can do about this?

b) some of the aforementioned creditors are coming up to or have gone beyond the 6 year default date so will they come off my credit file or do they remain because they are now in an IVA?

c) the IVA is probably the worst thing that I could have done. I am managing the payments but from a credit rating perspective it is a nightmare - I cannot remortgage, or do anything else and it may now affect my business as I can not go to a factoring company for our invoices for instance, or lease a car for work or do anything. I would have been better trying to come to some sort of arrangement direct with creditors. I would not recommend it to anyone unless it really is a last resort.

If I were to obtain a lump sum from a family member who could confirm that I did not need to repay it, what figure would be acceptable at this stage ie if I were to pay it in May or June of this year - taking me to nearly 22 payments out of the overall 60? ie 12100 Of the £33000, a third of it seems to be the supervisors fees. I was thinking of seeing if I could raise c£10,000 - do you think that they would accept it. I know that the IVA will remain on the credit file but at least it would say satisfied and my creditworthiness might be a bit better or is this just "pie in the sky" wishful thinking?

Hi,

I can't answer all your questions, but I will do what I can and hopefully one of the professionals will be on later to assist.

1. The defaults won't be making a lot of difference to your file at the moment as the IVA is the worst thing showing on there at the moment. I don't know whether or not there should be a figure next to it on the credit reference.

2. Not sure whether any defaults older than your IVA should be on there or not, but again I don't think it will make any difference to your credit rating now.

3. Unfortunately, an IVA does that to your credit rating, but most of us are quite happy to go along with it to be debt free in five years.

If you could obtain a lump sum, then you could make a full and final offer, I don't know whether £10,000 would be acceptable or not but you could ask your IP.

Your IVA will still remain there, as you say, but I'm not sure that the fact that is marked satisfied will enable you to obtain any more credit.

It is a shame that you feel that it is your IVA which is holding you back from moving forward, when in effect it is the fact that you owed debts you cannot afford to repay. Once this is recognised, I am afraid it is a matter of fact that your credit rating will be impaired for six years, and there is no real way around this.

Given that you have £22,000 worth of payments still to make, and do not appear to be struggling to fund the monthly contributions, my gut feeling is that £10,000 would not be sufficient, but you really ought to seek advice from your own IP in this regard.

If you are sruggling to make the payments, then perhaps a lower offer could be acceptable to creditors, but this is unlikely to improve your credit rating as the debts will still be annoted.

There is no harm in discussing this with your IP and seeing whether £10k would be acceptable as a F&F. They may be prepared to reduce their supervisors fee. Have a chat with your IP and see what he/she thinks.