DebtSolver.co.uk offers solutions to help people manage & eliminate their debt
Title
IVA Debt Advice from Debtsolver
Debtsolver arranges Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs) on behalf of people who wish to avoid bankruptcy.
Description
Debtsolver offer professional debt advice on IVA bankruptcy and debt management in the UK. They are a part of Accuma Group Plc, a UK public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange's AIM market.
Debtsolver are highly regulated, and will ensure that they recommend the most appropriate solution to solve your financial difficulty in the fastest possible time, based on the information that you provide.
Company Background
Debtsolver offer Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs), a process that allows individuals to avoid bankruptcy. In an IVA, debtors to agree to pay a fixed amount each month over a certain number of years, usually five. After this time all debts are cleared, and the individual will be debt free. The Group's operations consist of a personal insolvency practice dealing with IVAs, general debt advice passing individuals to other debt solver providers where appropriate. Debtsolver does not lend money, nor does it take clients' debt on to the balance sheet, thereby limiting its business risk.
Debtsolver are the high street of Accuma PLC set by Chief Executive Charles Howson in August 2003. Howson purchased licensed insolvency practitioner Chambers Consultants, investing £150,000 of his own money, seeing the potential for continuing strong growth in the area of debt advice.
Howson realised that buying a business that was already operating would be quicker than setting up a company from scratch. At the time the group only had four workers, an annual turnover of £200,000 and only 44 insolvency cases on the books. Today Debtsolver have space for up to 130 staff and offer advice to clients with debt problems the UK.
Howson changed the business’ name to Accuma saying at the time he did want to focus the company just on debt problems, but instead wanted to offer other financial services. In March of that year the group raised £3.7 million net by floating on the AIM.
Back in 2003 Debtsolver had only four staff offering debt advice and specialising in Individual Voluntary Arrangements or IVA s to consumers in the Manchester region of the UK.
In August 2005, Debtsolver purchased Wilson Phillips and employed six licensed Insolvency Pracitioners meaning that had the capacity to deal with 350 new IVA cases every month.
In February 2006 Debtsolver announced that they had conditionally raised £5 million and conditionally arranged a vendor placing of 3.5 million existing ordinary shares placed at a price of £2.00 per share.
The net proceeds were expected to be around £4.75 million to be used to accelerate the increases in the number of IVA’s the Group were handling at that time. This was an important move because at that time, the IVA market was growing rapidly with 2005 year on year growth expected to show a near doubling of the 10,000 IVAs registered in 2004. Consumer debt stood at £1.14 trillion. of which £192 billion was unsecured with £56 billion owed on credit cards. Consumer debts in the UK have been increasing at an average annual rate of almost 15 per cent since 1997.
Debtsolver at that time were growing even more rapidly. During the quarter leading up to flotation the number of IVAs completed stood at 46 per month. Since then, this has picked up to 86 in May, 106 in June and roughly 160 in July. Future contracted revenues now stand at £4.7 million.
Also 2006 in Debtsolver saw a threefold increase in the number of IVA cases handled each year as UK debt levels spiralled out of control. As a consequence, future contract revenue had more than doubled, and the move to new premises in Manchester City Tower had doubled their capacity to handle IVA cases. With the employment of two more IPs, Debtsolver were able to deal with over 500 IVA new cases a month.
In July 2006, Debtsolver announced the purchase of Thomas Charles for a sum exceeding £10 million. Thomas Charles was a consumer debt advice company in the UK. This purchase increased Debtsolver’s market share and also gave them a footing in the important London market.
In January 2007 Debtsolver announced a profits warning citing increased competition in the marketplace, leading to a 70% reduction in its share price. At this time there were warnings from UK leading banks that too many people were taking out IVAs, with some increasingly less supportive of them leading to lower IVA approval rates. Also industrial regulators were increasingly placing IVA companies under scrutiny, calling some adverts mis-leading and over-optimistic about how much debt and individual could write off in an IVA.
On February 8th 2007, Charles Howson bought nearly £49,000 of his company’s shares, feeling that they had come through the worst and were optimistic about their propects in 2008.
Address
- City Tower
- Piccadilly Plaza
- Manchester
- M1 4BT
- 0800 84 88 999
