MIMO SVD modulation is an efficient way of sending data through a multi-antenna communication link in which the transmitter has knowledge of the channel state. Despite its importance, there is no simple formula available for its symbol error rate (SER) and therefore no intuitive characterization of the quality of this technique for data transmission. In this paper, we show that the statistics of each eigenchannel of MIMO SVD transmissions can be effectively approximated using the Nakagami-m fading model. We show that the SER of the entire MIMO SVD link can be approximated by the average of the SER of Nakagami-m channels. The expression found is simple and provides intuition about the quality of the channel for data transmission. We also establish upper and lower bounds for the SER of MIMO SVD, which allows us to estimate the diversity degree of the MIMO SVD transmission. Finally, we also present an approximation for the SER of MIMO SVD communications with channel coding.