IVA glossary

Debt and insolvency come with a lot of jargon. These are the terms you're most likely to come across, with a short explanation of each.

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Annual review: A yearly check of your income and spending during an IVA. Your monthly payment may go up or down as a result.
Completion certificate: The document you receive when your IVA ends successfully, confirming the remaining included debts have been written off.
Creditor: A person or organisation you owe money to, such as a bank, card provider or utility company.
Credit reference agency: A company that holds information about how you manage credit. Lenders use this to decide whether to lend to you.
Decision procedure: The formal process, usually electronic, by which creditors vote on an IVA proposal.
Default: A record on your credit file showing that a credit agreement has broken down because of missed payments. Defaults stay on your file for six years.
Disposable income: The money left each month after essential living costs. In an IVA, this usually forms your monthly contribution.
Equity: The value of your home minus the mortgage and any other loans secured on it.
Equity release: Raising money from the equity in your home, usually by remortgaging. In an IVA, this is usually reviewed around six months before the end.
Full and final settlement: A lump sum offered to creditors to settle an IVA (or other debts) early, with the rest written off if accepted.
Insolvency: Being unable to pay your debts as they fall due, or owing more than you own.
Insolvency Practitioner (IP): A licensed professional authorised to set up and supervise IVAs, trust deeds and other insolvency procedures.
Insolvency Register: A free public record of people in formal insolvency. You're listed during an IVA and removed three months after it ends.
Insolvency Service: The government agency that deals with bankruptcy, Debt Relief Orders and oversight of insolvency in England and Wales.
Interim order: A court order that temporarily stops creditors taking action while an IVA proposal is being considered.
IVA Protocol: An industry framework that standardises how straightforward consumer IVAs are set up and run.
Nominee: The Insolvency Practitioner who prepares your IVA proposal and puts it to your creditors.
Priority debt: A debt with serious consequences for non-payment, such as mortgage or rent arrears, council tax and energy bills.
Proposal: The document setting out the terms of your IVA, including your payment, term, assets and fees.
Protected Trust Deed: Scotland's closest equivalent to an IVA.
Secured debt: A debt tied to an asset, usually your home, which the lender can take back if you don't pay. Secured debts can't be included in an IVA.
Standard Financial Statement (SFS): A budget format and set of spending guidelines used across the debt advice sector to work out what's affordable.
Supervisor: The Insolvency Practitioner who runs your IVA once it's approved, collecting payments and distributing them to creditors.
Unsecured debt: Debt not tied to an asset, such as credit cards, loans and overdrafts. Most unsecured debts can be included in an IVA.
Variation: A formal change to the terms of an IVA, agreed by creditors, for example after a significant change in your circumstances.
Windfall: An unexpected sum of money, such as an inheritance or lottery win. Windfalls usually have to be paid into an IVA.
Write-off: When the remaining balance of a debt no longer has to be paid, for example at the end of a successful IVA.

IVA glossary

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