It's very important that you take the prospect of an Individual Voluntary Arrangement very seriously. It's a binding agreement between you and your creditors, who will pursue you for repayment through the bankruptcy courts if you fail to keep to the IVA terms. In order to be fully prepared for the process, you need to find an insolvency adviser to help. This is vital for two reasons:

• Advice – you need to know everything about the IVA and what it entails. An insolvency specialist, with experience in Individual Voluntary Arrangements will be able to tell you everything you need to know.

• Administration – your IVA must be arranged by an insolvency professional. Creditors will not deal with you directly; your adviser acts as an intermediary between you and your creditors, helping to make sure that everything runs smoothly whilst the IVA is in place.

Paperwork for your IVA

Although your adviser will handle the paperwork and administration of your Individual Voluntary Arrangement, you will need to provide certain details before the process begins. Specifically, you will need to give your adviser all the details of the creditors you have. This needs to be any bank, building society, credit card, store card, loan or finance company to which you owe money. The administrator must be able to invite all your creditors to your IVA proposal meeting; if just one is missed out, your arrangement may not be able to go ahead. If you're considering an IVA, take the time now to dig out all the bills or demand letters that you've received so that you can give your adviser everything he or she needs in order to contact your creditors.

You will also need to show that you have enough income coming into your household to be able to meet whatever monthly payment is agreed with your creditors. The adviser may want to see payslips, employment contracts and bank statements in order to be able to make a suggestion about how much you can afford to pay. It may be useful for your adviser to have these details for you and your partner, if you are both working. Individual Voluntary Arrangements don't usually get approved if your income is solely benefit-based, and you must check this with your adviser before you go ahead.

Varden Nuttall has been established for over 15 years and is dedicated to helping people in financial difficulty find an insolvency solution through an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA). Employing 90 people, including trained and skilled IVA administrators, we are one of the largest IVA companies in the UK and handle over 3% of all IVA applications. To find out more about the company, or to make an appointment to talk about putting an IVA in place, call us today on 0800 031 9802 or fill in our online enquiry form.