UK Drowning in Debt, Is Debt Management a Way Out?
January 8, 2009 – 7:15 pmby Phillip Evans
A report out from the UK Insurer AXA suggests the UK public is drowning in debt with 11.6 million people (25 per cent of the adult population) saying are under pressure financially with a momentous number, around one million three hundred thousand people, admitting their finances are entirely unmanageable.
The report suggests that over 3.7 million people are reported to be struggling to cope with mounting credit card bills and just over a million people have borrowed too much money and are now struggling to keep up their repayments.
500,000 people have been threatened with the bailiffs or repossession and consumer county court judgements (CCJs) has reached their highest level since the start of 2007’s third quarter.
In England and Wales CCJs rose by 17.4 per cent year on year to 223,519, their highest level since the first quarter of 2007, according to figures published by the Registry Trust, the public interest company which manages the register of judgements, orders and fines on behalf of the Lord Chancellor. This represents an increase of 24.8 per cent from the second quarter of 2008.
Personal Insolvencies within England and Wales rose to just of twenty seven thousand in quarter 3 of 2008 which represents an 8.8 percent increase from just less that 25,000 in the previous quarter.
Bankruptcies and Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs) have increased 12 and 3 percent respectively.
The credit crunch could be blamed for the increase in corporate and personal insolvency throughout 2008, however, its patently obvious that further failures are going to be compounded by the recession throughout 2009.
It was hoped that the planned Simplified Individual Voluntary Arrangement (SIVA) that had been planned to be implemented early next year would offer some way out, however this has been abandoned by the Insolvency Service.
A simplified version of the IVA, for consumers with debts up to 75,000 and that would only require approval by a simple majority of creditors rather than the 75 per cent majority under normal IVAs, was due to be introduced in April 2009.
For the time being the options available to the equity challenged British public who are struggling with debt and are not wishing to go bankrupt is either seeking debt management advice or some form or individual insolvency arrangement.
Tags: advice, bankruptcy, Business, credit, debt advice, debt help, debt management, Finance, money, personal finance
