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Transfer of Aperture Debt Solutions Post IVA Trust portfolio

If your IVA with Aperture Debt Solutions LLP (“Aperture”) was closed before September 2020 and is subject to a Post IVA Trust, this is now being administered by Debt Movement UK Ltd.

Your IVA may not have started with Aperture, and it may have closed a long time ago but specific terms in your IVA proposal or a subsequent meeting of creditors together with the case law decisions in NT Gallagher & Sons (2002) and Green v Wright (2017) may mean that your IVA assets are still subject to a Trust.

Aperture no longer has access to any of your records. All of your information has been safely transferred to Debt Movement and is held securely in line with our privacy policy.

Debt Movement will process any funds received into your Post IVA Trust and distribute them to your creditors.  You may be entitled to some money back so it’s important that you speak with us when we call. You can find out more in our frequently asked questions below or by checking with the Insolvency Practitioners Association here.

The Post IVA Trust – Frequently Asked Questions

The case of Green v Wright confirmed that where a “Trust” is created when your IVA started or at a subsequent meeting of creditors, this is still in place after your IVA finishes, whether by successful completion or termination. This means that where the asset existed at the start of your IVA, such as the right to claim compensation for financial mis-selling, this would be due into your IVA if it was active and so it would be due into the IVA Trust if your IVA has since been closed.

Usually, the former Supervisor will act as Trustee of the Post IVA Trust, but this can be formally assigned to another Trustee – generally another licensed Insolvency Practitioner. The Trustee will gather in any assets for the benefit of your IVA creditors and distribute them until all creditors and costs have been paid in full.

Debt Movement UK Ltd are one of the UK’s largest personal insolvency practices, providing debt counselling, and credit information services. We propose and administer IVAs.

Following the acquisition of all live IVA cases in September 2020, in April 2021 all Post IVA Trusts held by Aperture were formally transferred to Laura Prescott, a licensed Insolvency Practitioner at Debt Movement.

This transfer has been approved by the Insolvency Practitioners Association (IPA) who authorise and regulate Laura Prescott to act as an Insolvency Practitioner in the UK.

Aperture no longer has access to any of your records. All of your information has been safely transferred to Debt Movement and is held securely in line with our privacy policy.

This means that even though your IVA may have been with Aperture, your Post IVA Trust is now being administered by Debt Movement, with Laura Prescott acting as your Trustee.

Debt Movement will process any funds received into your Post IVA Trust and distribute them to your creditors.

Unlike an IVA, there is no obligation to provide progress reports to clients or creditors – especially where there are no issues to report.

You may receive confirmation from your lender of claims management company regarding payment of financial redress to your Trustee. Debt Movement will not issue written confirmation each time funds are received, but do want to give you meaningful updates, and will aim to provide you with details of distributions to creditors as and when they occur.

If you do have a specific query in relation to your Post IVA Trust, please contact us via email ivatrusts@aperture.co.uk or via post to:

Debt Movement
The Lanyon Building
Jennymount Business Park
Belfast
BT15 3HN

Any assets that existed at the start of your IVA, including the right to claim compensation for financial mis-selling, would need to be fully investigated and realised for the benefit of your IVA creditors.

Recognising the delays that were happening within lender organisations and claims management companies, your former Supervisor may have proposed a series of changes to the administrative terms of your IVA to release you from the Arrangement whilst allowing them to continue to manage the assets held on Trust. This provided the specific terms for the handling of funds after the IVA had closed. Alternatively, your original IVA Proposal included specific terms regarding a Trust that were agreed from the outset of your Arrangement.

Had these terms not been included in your IVA, either from the outset or at a subsequent meeting of creditors, it would have been necessary to keep your IVA open until all matters were concluded.

Your final report would have contained confirmation that the Supervisor will continue to handle money or assets even after the closure of your IVA, whether it be successfully completed or failed. This would be administered under the Post IVA Trust.

If your IVA was failed, you were not released from the debts and did not receive any debt forgiveness (or write off) so your creditors were free to pursue you for the outstanding debt. It may be that you subsequently entered into another solution to address your outstanding debts, such as a Bankruptcy, a Debt Relief Order or a Debt Management Plan – you may have even entered into another IVA.

If your IVA concluded successfully this means that even though you didn’t pay your creditors back in full, they agreed via the IVA not to pursue you for the outstanding balance. It does not mean that the debt ceases to exist. Unless your creditors have been paid back in full, they will still have amounts owing to them.

Therefore, in both instances, whether your IVA failed or was successfully concluded, the Trustee will continue to pay IVA creditors from assets as they become available until your creditors have been paid in full.

The continuance of the Trust should have no impact on you other than for you to assist with the handling of assets or documents regarding your assets, usually financial mis-selling. Most of the time the actions will take place between claims management companies and the lenders, and your involvement will be minimal.

You are still required to co-operate with the Trustee and may even be entitled to the statutory interest element of any financial mis-selling compensation awarded, so it is in your interest to co-operate as quickly as possible when documents are received or requested.

Your IVA may not have started at Aperture. If this is the case, you were invited to agree to revised terms at the point of the transfer to Aperture to prevent delays in closing your IVA. If your IVA started with Clear Debt or Debt Free Direct Ltd, you were invited to agree to revised terms whilst your IVA was with them, prior to transfer to Aperture.

When your consent was received, your creditors were also asked to agree to the same terms at a meeting of creditors and these specific conditions then became part of your IVA. Aperture issued correspondence detailing the terms and the outcome of the creditors’ meetings. As part of those terms, you were also asked to complete all PPI paperwork.

This allowed the former Supervisor to issue their final report whilst continuing to handle the administration of any remaining assets and distribute any funds received to creditors included in your IVA.

If your arrangement commenced with Aperture after July 2015 these terms were incorporated into your original proposal to be agreed from the outset.

Changing the terms of your IVA was a way for your former Supervisor to administer all IVAs in the same way, it did not alter the existence of a Trust. Case law confirms that where an IVA fails, and a Certificate of Termination is issued (N.T Gallagher & Sons Ltd. Vs Tomlinson & Anor 2002) or where an IVA successfully completes, and a Certificate of Completion is issued (Green v Wright 2017) the Trust created at the commencement of the IVA does not cease to exist following the issuing of the Certificate, which serves only to release you from the IVA. Any assets that were bound by the terms of the IVA are subject to the ongoing Trust.

First Dispute Management Limited (“FDM”) are a specialist firm of solicitors who engage in litigation for the purpose of recovering compensation for financial mis-selling. Aperture’s Office Holders, in their capacity as Supervisor of live IVAs and Trustee of Post IVA Trusts, instructed FDM to investigate potential claims for the mis-selling of financial products, including any outstanding mis-sold PPI claims.

FDM lodged a huge number of outstanding claims prior to the deadline in August 2019 and many lenders are now processing offers as a result.

In order to ensure continuity of the claims process, Laura Prescott of Debt Movement has authorised FDM to continue investigating any financial mis-selling claims.

If you have instructed your own Claims Management Company (“CMC”) to investigate any potential financial mis-selling, it is important that they contact FDM as soon as possible, as they may have already started work on your claim.

Where a lender agrees that there was an element of mis-selling or where commission amounts were not properly disclosed to you at the point the product was taken out, they will generally make an offer to compensate you for this error.

This may or may not be as a result of a claim being instigated by you, FDM or any other Claims Management Company (“CMC”) – some lenders review their own practices and determine whether their policies were robust enough at a given date and choose to make compensation awards regardless of a claim, as a pre-emptive measure. You may have received confirmation directly from the lender with the amount of their offer.

As the lender is able to see from their records that you were in an IVA, they will ask whether the former IVA company has an interest in the claim. Where you IVA has closed and the Post IVA Trust remains, the Trustee will confirm an interest in the claim and the lender will pay them, or the CMC directly.

The amount that is paid into the Post IVA Trust will be the net amount after CMC fees have been deducted (if applicable), so you will not need to worry about paying any fees yourself.

If you receive payment directly from the lender in error, it is important that you contact us as soon as possible, as this payment will be due into the Post IVA Trust for the benefit of your creditors.

You will be entitled to receive the Statutory Interest element (net of realisation costs) on a successful claim if this was included in your IVA terms, or where it has been recovered by FDM.

In order to calculate your Statutory Interest payment, Debt Movement will require a copy of the offer letter from the lender which shows the Statutory Interest figure. We aim to pay Statutory Interest by the end of the month following the date the payment was received. However, it is important that we receive a copy of the offer letter to work out how much is due to you. If we do not have this, we cannot process the payment and will chase the lender directly.

Debt Movement can cancel the Cheque and issue you a payment you via BACs if the following details are provided by email to ivatrusts@debtmovement.co.uk

Name
IVA Reference
Email Address
Statutory Interest Cheque Value
Statutory Interest Cheque Number
Bank
Account Name
Sort Code
Account Number

It may take up to 90 days to cancel the cheque and re-issue the payment.

If your IVA failed and you have entered into another form of agreement to repay your creditors, it is important that you let us know so we can confirm the outstanding balances due to those creditors. The Trust will deal with any assets bound by your IVA and your IVA creditors only and will take precedence over any agreement you made afterwards.

“Set off” occurs where a lender deducts the amount they owe you following a successful financial mis-selling claim, from the amount outstanding on their debt. This means that there is no actual cash received into the IVA or Post IVA Trust.

Set-off will only benefit the creditor who applies it, whereas financial compensation paid into your Post IVA Trust will be distributed across all IVA creditors equally. The lender applying set-off will be required to formally notify the Trustee of their reduced claim. In some instances, lenders do not always provide this information in a timely manner, and it can cause delays in the ongoing administration of the Trust which is outside the Trustee’s control.

The Trust will remain active until your IVA creditors have received payment in full or once the Trustee is satisfied that all financial mis-selling claims have been finalised and there is nothing further to realise, they will take steps to vacate the trust, but whilst the trustee is of the opinion that an asset remains available, then they will continue to act.

You will receive a final statement confirming the amounts realised and distributed in the Post IVA Trust. Any further funds that come to light after that point will be yours to keep and if received by Debt Movement, will be sent directly to you without any further action required.