FOI release

FOI038 IVA failure rates by firm

Updated 27 October 2021

Our ref: FOI21/22-038

Date: 24 June 2021

Re: Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request

Thank you for your email of 8 June in which you requested from the Insolvency Service:

“I would like to make a FOI request on Individual Voluntary Arrangements Failure Rates by Provider, 2015 to 2020. We’ve requested this data last year for 2015 to 2018 period (please see Table 1 of the attached Excel). It would be greatly appreciated if you could kindly provide the latest data available.” Your request has been dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

I can confirm that the Insolvency Service holds the information that you have requested, and I have provided the information held in Annex A. Please note that IVA termination figures for those registered in 2020 have not been provided because insufficient time has passed to calculate those failures for the full year of registration.

Annex A presents the percentage of IVAs terminated within a specified number of quarters after the IVA was registered, by IVA firm. There are five tables at Annex A, each presenting the termination rates for IVAs registered in each of the years from 2015 to 2019. Percentages have been calculated as the number of IVAs terminated within a specified number of quarters, which were registered to a specific firm, as a proportion of the total number of IVAs registered by that firm. The top 10 firms were defined as the firms which registered the most IVAs in a given year, and may vary between years.

Under section 16 of the Act (Advice and Assistance) you may find it useful to note:

The percentages presented in these tables may not be consistent with those presented in response to FOI20/21-159. This is because the methodology for reporting volumes of IVAs by provider has changed. In these tables, the numbers are reported based on the firm associated with an IVA. In contrast, in the response to FOI20/21-159, numbers were based on the firm that the insolvency practitioner of the IVA was registered with. The latter was not always accurate.

The IVA firms listed are as registered on the Insolvency Service Case Information System as at 31st December 2020, which may not reflect the firms with which some IVAs were initially registered. Ongoing IVAs may be transferred between firms. As a result, particular caution should be taken when interpreting the termination rates for IVAs registered with a firm that has since ceased providing IVAs, with ongoing cases transferred to another firm. In these cases, it is more likely to be the IVAs that terminated early that were not transferred that are reported, resulting in a higher failure rate for the firm. Correspondingly, the firms receiving transferred cases may have a lower failure rate, as a result of receiving only ongoing cases and not those that had already terminated.

IVAs are counted within these statistics once they are registered with the Insolvency Service. There is often a time lag between the date on which the IVA is accepted (known as the date of creditor agreement) and date of registration by licensed insolvency practitioners working for firms that specialise in this area. Therefore, it is possible that the time between an IVA “starting” and terminating may be longer than the time between registration and termination.

If you are not satisfied with the response we have provided you and would like us to reconsider our decision by way of an internal review (IR), please contact our Information Rights Team at foi@insolvency.gov.uk or by post at:

Information Rights Team
The Insolvency Service
3rd Floor
Cannon House
18 Priory Queensway
Birmingham
B4 6FD
United Kingdom

You also have the right to contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you wish for them to investigate any complaint you may have regarding our handling of your request. However, please note that the ICO is likely to expect an IR to have been completed in the first instance.

Yours sincerely,

Information Rights Team The Insolvency Service