How we negotiate with your creditors

Our dedicated team handles all interactions with your creditors and debt collection agencies, including:

• making repayment offers and renegotiating if needed
• ensuring agreed payments are received
• checking balances and raising any issues if something doesn’t look right
• monitoring legal or recovery action and asking for it to be stopped
• asking creditors to freeze interest and charges

Once you choose to go ahead with a DMP, we start contacting your creditors.

We propose repayments based on your budget and explain your situation clearly. Read more about how Debt Management Plan payments are worked out.

We’ll also ask creditors to freeze interest and charges. They don’t have to do this, but many do.

Managing multiple creditors can be stressful, so we do this for you.

A debt management proposal is the repayment plan we put to your creditors. It shows:

• how much you’ll pay each month
• how your payment will be shared
• how long it may take to repay your debts

We base your proposal on what you can realistically afford after covering essential living costs.

Once your plan is set up, you’ll make one monthly payment to us. We take our fee and distribute the rest between your creditors.

Payments are shared on a pro rata basis, meaning each creditor receives a share based on the size of your debt. For example, if one creditor accounts for half of your total debt, they’ll receive roughly half of your monthly payment.

We usually send payments to your creditors within a few working days of receiving your monthly payment. Sometimes there may be a short delay if we need more information from you or your creditor.

Creditors don’t have to accept a DMP.

However, many do accept reduced payments when they can see:

• your budget has been assessed by a debt adviser
• the payment is fair
• you’re paying as much as you can realistically afford

If a creditor doesn’t accept the proposal, we’ll continue negotiating and discuss the next steps with you.