A leading finance website has published a warning to consumers about what it calls a "rogue debt advice company" who have been encouraging people with an individual voluntary arrangement (IVA) to default on it and go bankrupt.

Website thisismoney.co.uk, which is owned by the same company as the Daily Mail and London Evening Standard newspapers, published the warning about a company called "the IVA council" (or IVAC).

Company had no authority to advise individual voluntary arrangement defaults

IVAC recently wrote to more than three thousand customers of debt advice companies around the country – using information it bought from the government-backed Insolvency Service – and advised them to default on their Individual voluntary arrangements and declare themselves bankrupt instead.

Thisismoney.co.uk says that the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform – formerly the Department of Trade and Industry, or DTI – has publicly distanced itself from IVAC and said that it "does not condone its advice"

The article continues, "IVAC admitted to This is Money that it had no authority to advise customers to default on their payments."

"People have taken out individual voluntary arrangements with regulated services"

It also quotes Derek Oakley, insolvency director of Debt Free Direct – one of the individual voluntary arrangement providers targeted by IVAC. He said, "These people are unqualified and unregulated, which is ironic as all people who have taken on an IVA have done so with a regulated service."

Payment agreements made as part of individual voluntary arrangements are legally binding, and to default on one could lead to further credit problems, including bankruptcy – which carries a list of financial restrictions, and a stigma, for many people, that an individual voluntary arrangement does not.

Talk to Varden Nuttall about an individual voluntary arrangement.

Varden Nuttall has been established for more than 15 years and is dedicated to helping people in financial difficulty find a debt management solution through an individual voluntary arrangement (IVA). We employ 90 people, including trained and skilled individual voluntary arrangement administrators, we are one of the largest individual voluntary arrangement companies in the UK and handle more than three per cent of all individual voluntary arrangement applications. To find out more about the company, or to make an appointment to talk about putting an individual voluntary arrangement in place, call us today on 0800 031 9802 or fill in our online enquiry form.