Debt Management Plan
A Debt Management Plan is an informal agreement designed to allow someone who is struggling to meet their monthly debt repayments. It can only be used on unsecured debts, but is designed to move all your payments into one new affordable monthly payment.
Debt Management offers you a layer of protection between you and your creditors. By taking away the potential strain of dealing with your debts direct as this will be handled by DFH’s customer service teams. They will also handle all of your creditor post and any negotiations regarding your offers of payment.
Before any offer of payment is made, a full income and expenditure assessment is conducted to arrive at an affordable monthly repayment. This is based on your disposable income after all of your essential expenses are considered. Our teams will always make sure a reasonable standard of living is reached and money to pay your existing household costs each month. DFH will negotiate offers with your creditors on a pro-rata basis from your payment in to the plan after the monthly management fee has been deducted.
Where possible, DFH will try to freeze or reduce interest and charges and the creditor liaison team will regularly monitor this during the term of the Plan.
Reviews will be completed to ensure the payment continues to be affordable and also to maintain arrangements with the creditors, as well as notifying you of any alternative debt solutions that may be more beneficial following a change in circumstances.
Who may be suitable?
- Lives in the UK
- Unable to meet their contractual payments
- Debt level – £1500 or more
- Disposable income – £100 or more
- At least 2 or more unsecured creditors
- Unable to repay debts in under 12 months
Risks and considerations
Failure to maintain repayments under the terms of your credit agreements or hire agreements may result in the loss of services or assets and may have a sever effect on your future credit rating.
Failure to continue to pay taxes, fines, child support payments and other certain debts could result in the loss of access to essential goods or services or repossession of, or eviction from your home.
There is expenditure restrictions placed on a person who is entering into an IVA.
Ignoring contact or correspondence from your creditors could result in them pursuing further collections activity against you so it is important to maintain contact and let DFH know if you receive any letters or phone calls from your creditors.
A failure to maintain contractual payments to your creditors could result in further recovery action from your creditors which may increase your debt to that creditor as any costs they incur may be added to the debt.
By entering in to a debt management plan, there is no guarantee that any current recovery or legal action will be suspended or withdrawn. DFH’s creditor liaison team will however, negotiate with these creditors on your behalf and you should notify them at your earliest opportunity should you have concerns about this sort of activity from your creditors.
Important to note
Repaying your debt over a longer period of time may increase the amount you pay. Joining a debt management programme won’t always show up on your credit report, but it could still affect your ability to obtain credit – making a new repayment agreement with your creditors does mean you’re not following the original agreement.