How to check whether your IVA is still active

Start with the public register

Individual Voluntary Arrangements in England and Wales are recorded on the Individual Insolvency Register, which the Insolvency Service publishes and anybody can search free of charge at gov.uk/search-bankruptcy-insolvency-register. Search your own surname and the town you lived in when the arrangement started, not where you live now — the register records the address given at the time.

If your arrangement is live, the entry will show your name, the date the IVA was approved, and the name and firm of the insolvency practitioner supervising it. That practitioner is the person who holds your case today, whoever originally sold it to you.

In Scotland the equivalent arrangement is a protected trust deed, recorded on the Register of Insolvencies at roi.aib.gov.uk, run by the Accountant in Bankruptcy. In Northern Ireland, individual insolvency records are held separately by the Insolvency Service there rather than on the England and Wales register, so a blank result on the gov.uk search does not settle the question if your case was a Northern Irish one.

What it means if nothing comes up

An entry is removed from the Individual Insolvency Register roughly three months after the arrangement ends, however it ended. So a blank search usually means one of three things.

1. The IVA completed. You paid what the arrangement required, the supervisor issued a certificate of completion, and the remaining balances were written off. If this is what happened there will be a completion certificate — ask the supervising firm for a copy if you have lost yours, because you may need it later to correct your credit file.
2. The IVA failed. Payments stopped, the supervisor issued a certificate of failure, and the original debts came back to life with any arrears added. Creditors are then free to chase them again, and often sell them on to a debt purchaser, which is why people sometimes get a letter years later from a company they have never heard of.
3. It never became an IVA at all. A surprising number of people who believe they had an IVA in fact had a debt management plan, which is an informal arrangement, is not legally binding, and never appears on any insolvency register.

The register will not tell you which of those happened. The next two checks will.

Follow the money

Look at your bank statements. The name on the direct debit or standing order is the firm currently collecting your payments, and it is the single most reliable clue you have. If a payment is still leaving your account every month, something is still running, and your bank can tell you exactly who set the mandate up and when it was last amended.

If payments stopped some time ago and you never received a completion certificate, treat that as a warning sign rather than good news. An IVA that simply stopped being paid has very likely failed, and the debts are live again even though nobody has written to you yet.

Check your credit file

An IVA is recorded on your credit file for six years from the date it was approved, not from the date it finished. All three UK credit reference agencies — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — offer free statutory access, and between them they will show the date the arrangement started, whether it is marked as satisfied or completed, and how the individual accounts within it are being reported.

Two things are worth doing while you are there. Check that the arrangement is marked as completed if it has completed, because incorrectly reported IVAs are common and cost people mortgage applications. And check the individual accounts, which should be showing as partially settled or satisfied rather than as continuing defaults.

Ask the firm directly

If the register names a firm, contact that firm. You are entitled to ask for a statement of your account showing what you have paid in, what has been taken in fees, and what has gone to creditors, and a regulated insolvency practitioner should provide it without argument.

If the firm that originally arranged your IVA has closed, your case will normally have been transferred to another practitioner rather than abandoned — there is a separate guide on this site about what happens when the firm that set up your IVA closes.

If you cannot identify anybody at all, the Insolvency Service enquiry line on 0300 678 0015 (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm) can often point you in the right direction.

More guides on this site

• What happens to your IVA when the firm that set it up closes
• Where your IVA payments actually go: fees explained
• How to complain about an insolvency practitioner

See all guides