The Insolvency Act 1986 (c. 45) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that provides the legal platform for all matters relating to personal and corporate insolvency in the UK.

The Insolvency Act 1986 followed the publication and most of the findings in the Cork Report, including the introduction of the Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) and Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) procedures.

Elements of the Act were updated by the Enterprise Act 2002, which came into effect on 1 April 2004 and introduced amongst other things the popular "out-of-court" administration route,[1] and the allocation of a limited amount of funding released from assets, known as the "prescribed part", which could be made available to support ordinary unsecured creditors ahead of secured creditors.

Further updates to the Act were made by the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020, which provided a moratorium for companies that were likely to become insolvent and gave additional reliefs for businesses that were adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Insolvency Act 1986 essentially governs issues relating to personal bankruptcy and Individual Voluntary Arrangements and all administrative orders relating to company insolvency.