How to find out who holds your debt plan

1. Follow the payment

Start with your bank statements. The name on the direct debit or standing order is the firm currently receiving your money, and it is more reliable than anything you were told at the outset. Your bank can tell you who set the mandate up, when it was last amended, and the reference used — and mandates are often quietly transferred when a book of clients is sold.

If the name has changed since you signed up, search that new name on Companies House and the FCA register before you do anything else.

2. Work out what you actually have

This changes everything that follows, and a lot of people are unsure.

• A debt management plan is an informal arrangement. It is not legally binding, it appears on no public register, and the firm running it must be FCA authorised.
• An IVA or a Scottish protected trust deed is a formal insolvency procedure, legally binding, supervised by a licensed insolvency practitioner, and recorded on a public register.

If it is formal, you can look yourself up. England and Wales: the Individual Insolvency Register at gov.uk/search-bankruptcy-insolvency-register. Scotland: the Register of Insolvencies at roi.aib.gov.uk. Northern Ireland keeps its own records through the Insolvency Service there. Search the address you lived at when the arrangement started. The entry names the practitioner supervising your case today.

If nothing appears and you were told you had an IVA, either it has ended — entries come off about three months afterwards — or it was never an IVA at all.

3. Search the FCA register

Search the firm name, and any trading name you were given, at register.fca.org.uk. The register records trading names, previous names, current status and contact details, so it often bridges the gap between the brand you signed up with and the company that now holds your file. If a firm you have been paying is not on it at all, get free advice straight away.

4. Check Companies House

Search the company at find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk. Look at whether it is still active, whether it has changed name (previous names are listed), and whether an insolvency practitioner has been appointed. Where a company has been dissolved, the final filings often name whoever took the client book on.

5. Ask your creditors

The most underrated step. Your creditors know who has been paying them on your behalf. Ring or write to one or two of the larger ones, quote your account number, and ask who is making payments to the account and what the current balance is. They will usually tell you, and it also gives you an independent check on whether the money you have been paying is genuinely reaching them.

That last point matters. If your creditors say no payments have been received while money has been leaving your account, stop and get free advice immediately — see how to spot a debt advice scam.

Do not simply cancel the direct debit

The instinct is understandable, but stopping payments on a formal arrangement is the usual route to it failing, which revives the original debts with arrears added. If you cannot establish who to pay, set the money aside rather than spending it, and get the position confirmed before you change anything.

If you have concluded you are paying a firm for a service you could get free, that is a different question, and one of the charities below will help you move a plan across without charge.

More guides on this site

• How to check a debt firm on the FCA register
• DMP, IVA or bankruptcy: what the differences actually are
• How to spot a debt advice scam

See all guides