Welcome to IVAs the Truth

Why I started Speak For You — and what this blog is here to do

By Roger Wallis · Founder, Speak For You Ltd

There is a woman I want to tell you about. I won't tell you her name. I won't tell you who put her into the arrangement she's in. But here are the facts.

She is a widow. She lives in rented accommodation. She owns nothing — no house, no car of any value, no savings. Her income is her state pension and a small pension from her late husband. That is what she lives on. She has high blood pressure. She has been treated for depression for years.

Three years ago, she rang a number she had seen on the internet because she was worried about a debt of around eleven thousand pounds. Two credit cards, and a personal loan she had taken out — not for herself, but for her son.

She was put into a five-year Individual Voluntary Arrangement.

She could have written that debt off in six weeks, for nothing, through a Debt Relief Order. She qualified. She had no assets. She had almost no surplus income. By every measure the regulator uses, she was a vulnerable customer.

Nobody told her about the free option. She has been paying every month for three years.

She is not one person. She is a pattern. And that pattern is why this blog exists.

What this blog is for

My name is Roger Wallis. I founded Speak For You because somebody has to say what the IVA industry would rather you didn't hear.

I am not a solicitor. I am not an insolvency practitioner. I am not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority and I will never pretend to be. What I am is the person who reads the paperwork after the event, and works out — line by line — what should have happened instead.

This blog is going to do three things.

First, it is going to explain, in plain English, how the UK personal insolvency market actually works. The referral-fee model. The debt packager model. How a phone call to a number on the internet becomes a five-year commitment with somebody you have never met.

Second, it is going to point at the documents that matter. The Standard Financial Statement that determines your entire future on one piece of paper. The IVA proposal that almost nobody reads. The five questions you should have been asked before you signed anything.

Third, it is going to tell you the truth about the free options the industry has very little incentive to mention. A Debt Relief Order, for example, is now free to apply for, the £90 fee was abolished in April 2024. Hardly anyone is told that.

What this blog is not

It is not debt advice. It is not legal advice. It is not financial advice. Speak For You Ltd is an independent consumer advocacy service — not a regulated firm, not a claims management company, not a firm of solicitors.

Free, regulated debt help is available in this country and you should use it. There are charities and helplines that exist specifically to triage debt problems for free. A Debt Relief Order, if you qualify, costs nothing to apply for. If you take one thing away from anything I write here, the action it should prompt is never "do what Roger said." It is "go and find a regulated professional, or a free-sector adviser, and ask them about this."

I am the person who tells you which questions are worth asking. I am not the person who answers them for you.

The book

Everything you read on this blog is the short version of a longer argument. The long version is a book — Insolvency: The Truth — which is published and available now.

It tells the full story of how the UK personal insolvency industry came to be what it is. How a system originally built to give people a fair second chance was, over time, hollowed out and rebuilt around the commercial interests of the people who profit from other people's debt. Who the players are. How the money moves. Why the regulators have done so little, for so long. And what the people on the receiving end can do about it.

If anything in this blog rings true — or rings true about somebody you love — the book is where the whole argument is set out, evidence by evidence. You can find it here: Insolvency - The Truth

What's coming next

A new post every week.

The next four are already mapped:

●      The Standard Financial Statement — the most important piece of paper in your life that you have probably never read.

●      Debt Relief Orders are free. Here is what that actually means — and what disqualifies you.

●      How to read your own IVA proposal in twenty minutes.

●      The five questions you should have been asked before you signed.

If any of this sounds like your story, or like the story of someone you love, subscribe to the blog or follow IVAs the Truth on Facebook. Share what you read. Tell the people who need to hear it.

The first thing the industry took from these people was the truth.

We are giving it back.

— Roger