Meeting at The Insolvency Exchange HQ
Yesterday,thursday 8th,I met Martin Prigent who is head of Insolvency Relations at the TIX headquarters in Nottingham.I had been invited to attend alongside Melanie and her business partner Philip Gill.
The Insolvency Exchange [TIX] represent several creditors[HBOS,RBS group,M&S money,HSBC,and First Direct] and process and vote on nearly 80% of all IVA proposals[if memory serves me correct]
Melanie and Philip were looking to get answers to some technical issues regarding the proposals that they were submitting [TIX compliant proposals] and my focus was to get answers to some questions that I had put together from a “Joe public, debtors” point of view.
Martin was very open and I felt was keen to listen to both Melanie and myself,he came across as someone who wanted to explain the reasoning behind TIX and the recent changes that had been introduced to try and bring the IVA procedure into the twenty first century[automated payments from IPs to creditors,paperless office system and statistics gained from the IVAs that are processed]
My main question related to assurances that people who had a low monthly IVA proposal would not be excluded from an IVA due to the fee structure[the TIX compliant IVA states that IPs will be paid a proportion of the debtors monthly payment and a £250 monthly IVA would result in a total IP fee of less than 3k,compared to the industry average of 6k].Martin assured me that they still received proposals with payments of less than £200 per month and that,as there was no fee capping ,IPs would earn 15k on a £1200 per month IVA and this would make up for the low fee IVAs.
My next question related to HSBCs 40p hurdle rate that I felt was unacceptable as it prevented debtors from entering into an IVA if they had a debts with HSBC that represented more than 25% of the total debt and couldn’t realise a 40p dividend .Martin stated that this was a condition that HSBC had imposed and that they would,generally,not budge from.However he did think that there might be a relaxing of this policy in the not to distant future.
I asked if the clause relating to equity release in the fourth year not costing more than 60% of the debtors disposible income was standard and he said that it was,something that I welcomed.I also asked how he felt about the remortgage for equity release running past retirement date and he felt that this should not happen in the majority of cases and is something that they would look at.
I asked how they felt about an insurance to cover the debtor in an IVA against illness and redundancy and Martin felt that this was a “no go” purely because there was not a suitable policy in the market place,however he did say that if a suitable policy became available that they would look at it.
Finally I raised my main concern and that was regarding creditors asking for increased payments at the meeting stage.I said that on the forum I had noticed an increase in the number of modifications asking for increased payments from debtors.I explained to Martin that at the time of a creditors meeting debtors are highly emotional and would agree to almost anything resulting in hardship several months down the line.
More trust should be put with IPs to produce accurate disposible income figures and that these should not be changed for no good reason.I think that there was agreement on this and a possible way forward was an accreditation mark for IPs from TIX to show that they were trusted 100%.
I have to say that I felt proud that IVA.co.uk had been invited to meet such a major player in the IVA industry and feel that,as we continue to grow,the site and forum is becoming widely read and respected by both debtors AND creditors.
