If you find yourself in a position where you have to take into consideration going for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement or IVA, you shouldn’t just go for the first company you see when you do a Google search because not all companies that offer IVA are the same.
You can always search for advice on the best financial websites out there like Forbes or Entrepreneur or even seek for a professional advice on how to approach the issue you have and how to pick the right IVA company for you but it might cost you much more than you can afford.
IVA seems like and excellent solution for people who are in debt but like in any other business there are better and worse companies and it’s no different with the IVA companies. Doing your research on the IVA companies in order to get to the best IVA company for you, can be a really long and exhausting process if you don’t know what to look for.
As we previously mentioned, IVA companies are not all the same and when you go for a longer commitment, which getting an IVA really is, you want to pick a company that you can rely on because you’ll have to deal with annual reviews and in case you find yourself having some trouble with your usual salary because it dropped for any unexpected reason, you’ll want a company that will be able to assess the situation correctly and present your options.
When picking out an IVA company there are a few things you want to check and take into consideration and we’ve created a list of those to make it easier for you.
- Length of the IVA
Generally, IVA’s last for about 5-6 years depending on the company, although they are mainly presented as a 5-year arrangement, however, they may go on for much longer if any problems appear or if you fail to deliver a certain payment. So far the track record of IVA’s isn’t the greatest at around 63% finishing on time and successfully.
- Fees and Payments
This may seem like something that doesn’t really impact you since the fees that the company takes are included into your monthly payments and they don’t pose a direct cost but in the slight chance that you IVA fails, or you stumble upon some money from inheritance and you want to cancel the IVA earlier than expected in order to free yourself of the debt right away you’ll still have to pay the fees for the rest of your arrangement.
- Failure rate of the Companies
When you’re checking out the IVA companies, make sure you check their failure rate as well. It can range anywhere from around 15% to about 30% and of course you’ll want to go with the company that has the lowest failure rate.
- Amount of time it takes to Issue a completion certificate
This is also an important thing to take into consideration because there are IVA companies that offer much faster service after you made your last payment. It can range anywhere from 3 months to a year but we’re sure you want to take your debt off your mind as soon as possible so going with the ones that are faster makes more sense.
- Keep in mind that your IVA may be traded or transferred to another company
There are IVA companies out there that are trading with other companies and there’s a slight chance that a block of your IVA gets transferred to another company which can be very annoying. Also there’s always a chance that the company you picked to for your IVA goes out of business and they have to transfer all of their IVAs to a different company which you might not be comfortable with because, more often than not, the company that takes over will have a huge issue with administration when they try to transfer all the data and details they took over a large amount of IVAs.
In the end of it all you may think to yourself if going through all this research will really matter in the end but it really matters and it will make a difference. Some companies are better at this than others because they will put much more time to manage your IVA and do everything in their power to prevent it from failing so make sure you do your due diligence and go through the steps presented in order to successfully get rid of your debt.