Business Guruz

Are we in the UK drowning in Debt? According to the insurer AXA, some 11.6 million people (25 per cent of the adult population) are said to be struggling financially with a significant number, around 1.3 million people, admitting their finances are entirely out of control.

The insurer goes on to say that over a million UK residents have borrowed too much credit and are now struggling to keep up their repayments, with less than 4 million struggling to manage their credit card bills.

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.

The public interest Company that manages the register of judgements on behalf of the Lord Chancellor has reported that within England and Wales County Court Judgements rose by 17.4 per cent year on year to 223,519, its highest level since the beginning of 2007 and from the second quarter of 2008 this is a 25 per cent increase.

Individuals entering into insolvency within the borders of England and Wales are on the up by nearly 9 per cent or just over twenty seven thousand in the 3rd part of 2008 compared with 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 SIVA, planned for release in early 2009 would help with some of the debt burden, however, the Insolvency Service has just abandoned the concept.

For consumers with debts up to 75,000 a SIVA, being the simplified IVA and would have only required that a simple majority of your creditors to accept the proposal for insolvency, was planned for 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.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 31st, 2009 at 1:00 am and is filed under Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.