When your insolvency practitioner goes wrong: a consumer's guide to complaints

If you are a debtor in an IVA, a creditor chasing a dividend, a director whose company has gone into liquidation, or an employee waiting on a redundancy payment, you are entitled to expect competent, honest and timely service from a licensed Insolvency Practitioner (IP). Most do their job properly. But some do not — and the published disciplinary record makes the recurring problems uncomfortably clear.

This guide explains what bad conduct typically looks like, how to complain about it, what evidence helps, and what realistic outcomes you can expect.

What "going wrong" actually looks like

The patterns in published sanctions over recent years are remarkably consistent. If any of the following sounds like your situation, you may have legitimate grounds to complain.

1. Delay and case stagnation. By far the most common failing. Several practitioners have been sanctioned for taking five years or more to pay a dividend despite holding the funds. Others have failed to close IVAs once the debtor had completed their payments, leaving people unable to rebuild their credit. A recurring pattern is failure to file progress reports at Companies House — sometimes hundreds of missed or late reports across dozens of cases.

2. Poor or non-existent investigations. Liquidators are required by Statement of Insolvency Practice (SIP) 2 to investigate the affairs of the company and its directors proportionately, and to document what they did. A large number of disciplinary findings involve IPs who failed to investigate properly, failed to record their reasoning, or failed to report director misconduct to the Insolvency Service via the Director Conduct Reporting Service.

3. Bad advice at the start of an IVA or Debt Relief Order. Several cases involve IPs (or staff acting under their supervision) giving misleading or factually incorrect information during initial advice calls, including to vulnerable debtors. Others have wrongly told debtors they were ineligible for a Debt Relief Order when in fact they were, or pushed people into unsuitable IVAs.

4. Money problems. These include drawing fees without proper creditor approval, drawing disbursements not permitted by the IVA terms, paying themselves before paying preferential creditors, failing to bond cases properly, recharging bond costs that had never been incurred, and failing to keep estate money in segregated accounts (a SIP 11 breach).

5. Anti-money-laundering failures. A very large share of disciplinary action concerns failures to carry out customer due diligence before accepting a case, failures to file Suspicious Activity Reports with the National Crime Agency when criminal conduct (often furlough or Bounce Back Loan fraud) was suspected, and failures to escalate to the firm's Money Laundering Reporting Officer.

6. Pension and redundancy mishandling. Repeated failings around Forms RP14, RP14A, RP15 and RP15A submitted to the Redundancy Payments Service — including holiday claims for directors and family members that were never verified, and ignoring correspondence from pension administrators for months or years.

7. Referral fees and conflicts. Paying for IVA introductions, running "refer a friend" incentive schemes, or maintaining a professional relationship with a colleague known to have falsified documents.

8. Poor communication. Ignoring debtors' letters, ignoring solicitors' enquiries, failing to acknowledge revised settlement offers, or misleading a debtor into thinking creditors had rejected an offer that was never put to them.

The four channels: who to complain to, and when

There is a clear order. Skipping steps will usually mean you are bounced back.

Step 1 — The IP's own internal complaints procedure (always first)

Every licensed IP must operate a complaints procedure. Write to the IP (or their firm's complaints partner) setting out:

who you are and your status (debtor, creditor, director, employee)
the case name and number
what they did or failed to do
what you want them to put right

Give them a clear deadline — eight weeks is standard. Keep the letter factual. Do not threaten. Send it by email and by post if you can, so there is a delivery record.

If they put things right at this stage, you have saved yourself months. If they don't, you now have written evidence of the complaint and their response, which is what every subsequent body will ask for.

Step 2 — The Insolvency Service Complaints Gateway

Since 2013 there has been a single front door for complaints against IPs in England, Wales and Scotland: the Insolvency Service Complaints Gateway. You complete an online form (or a paper one) and the Gateway routes the complaint to the IP's Recognised Professional Body (RPB) — the regulator that licenses them.

You can find the Gateway via gov.uk. It is free to use.

The Gateway is the right channel for regulatory misconduct: breaches of the Insolvency Code of Ethics, breaches of the Statements of Insolvency Practice, breaches of the Insolvency (England and Wales) Rules 2016 or the Insolvency Act 1986, anti-money-laundering failings, and failures of competence and due care.

You generally do not need to know which RPB licenses your IP — the Gateway will work that out. The main RPBs are the Insolvency Practitioners Association (IPA), the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS), the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), and Chartered Accountants Ireland (CAI). Each operates its own Regulation and Conduct Committee or Insolvency Licensing Committee, applies the same Insolvency Code of Ethics, and uses common sanctions guidance.

Step 3 — The RPB itself

In most cases the Gateway is the route in. But once your complaint has been accepted, it will be the RPB that investigates, corresponds with you, and decides whether disciplinary action is warranted. Outcomes range from "no case to answer" through advisory notices, reprimands, severe reprimands, fines (commonly between £1,500 and £10,000, occasionally much higher for firms), licence restrictions, and ultimately withdrawal of the IP's licence.

Step 4 — The Insolvency Service Adjudicator

If you are unhappy with how the RPB handled your complaint (not the underlying conduct itself), you can ask the Insolvency Service's independent adjudicator to review the RPB's handling. This is a process review, not a fresh investigation. The Adjudicator can recommend that an RPB reconsider, but cannot substitute their own disciplinary finding.

Evidence to gather before you complain

Strong complaints succeed because they are documented. Before you write anything, pull together:

All correspondence with the IP and their firm (emails, letters, file notes of phone calls — with dates)
The IVA proposal, liquidation report, statement of affairs, or any progress reports you have received
Bank statements showing payments in and out (if you are a debtor in an IVA)
Proof of claim and any dividend correspondence (if you are a creditor)
Forms RP14/15 and Redundancy Payments Service correspondence (if you are an employee)
A clear, dated timeline of what happened and what you say went wrong
Any prior complaint response from the IP's firm

Keep originals; send copies. If you spoke to anyone on the phone, write a contemporaneous note of the conversation immediately afterwards.

Realistic timescales and outcomes

Be patient. The IP's own complaints procedure typically takes up to eight weeks. The Gateway triage stage usually takes a few weeks. The RPB investigation itself can take many months — complex cases, particularly those involving anti-money-laundering or multiple appointments, routinely take a year or more from start to a published consent order.

Outcomes you can realistically expect:

Regulatory sanction of the IP (reprimand, fine, conditions on licence, or, rarely, licence withdrawal). This is what the disciplinary process delivers.
Practical remediation — e.g. release of funds wrongly held, correction of RP forms, removal of a defaulted IVA marker — often achieved earlier, by the IP under pressure from their RPB.
Refund of overdrawn fees — occasionally ordered.

What the regulatory process does not usually do is compensate you for your losses. Fines are paid to the regulator, not to you. If you have suffered real financial loss because of the IP's conduct, that is a different track.

When to bring in a solicitor

There is a clear dividing line:

Regulatory misconduct (ethics, SIPs, statutory rules, delay, AML) — use the Gateway. You do not need a solicitor, though you may want one for a complex creditor complaint.
Professional negligence (the IP's breach of duty caused you quantifiable financial loss) — speak to a solicitor with insolvency litigation experience. Strict time limits apply (generally six years from the date of the breach, but advice should be taken early).
Misfeasance by an office-holder under section 212 of the Insolvency Act 1986 — a court application, usually solicitor-led, typically brought by a successor office-holder or by creditors.
Suspected dishonesty or fraud — report to Action Fraud and, where appropriate, the National Crime Agency, as well as the RPB.

The two tracks can run in parallel. A regulatory finding, once published, can be useful evidence in a later civil claim — but do not delay legal advice while you wait for the regulator to finish.

A final word

The published disciplinary record shows that regulators do act, that consent orders and fines are routine, and that licences are withdrawn where the public needs protecting. The system is not perfect and it is rarely quick, but it works best when complainants are organised, factual, and persistent. Start with the IP, escalate through the Gateway, document everything, and get legal advice early if real money is at stake.