The Financial Ombudsman (FOS) complaint statistics for Oct-Dec 2019 have just been published, see Product Complaints Data. For guarantor loans, FOS decided in favour of the consumer in 90% of cases: this is even higher than the 83% that were won in April-Jun 2019. these figures are a dramatic increase from the uphold rate of only 32% for the 2018 financial year. This … [Read more...]
Debt news and policy
Debt Camel articles on what's changing - and what ought to change - in the world of personal debt in Britain.
If you are interested in a specific area, look at: High cost credit news & policy and Insolvency news & policy.
Wonga victims will only get 4.3p in the pound
On 28th January 2020, the Wonga administrators announced that they will be paying all unsecured creditors 4.3% of their agreed Claim. They stated: This is a first and final dividend totaling £23,090,071.32, representing 4.3p in £ on agreed creditor claims of £535,636,017.75. No further dividends are expected to be paid to the Company’s creditors. Most of the unsecured creditors are the c. … [Read more...]
New “simpler” overdraft charges in 2020 – the gainers and losers
In 2019, the bank regulator, the FCA, announced new rules about overdraft charges. It called these: the biggest shake-up to the overdraft market for a generation. Banks had to change their overdraft charging before April 2020. In January 2020, the last of the banks announced how they were changing their rates. In 2020 the FCA admitted that about 8 million people will be paying more under the … [Read more...]
Debt Advice – 2019 did not go well – what will happen in 2020?
Many annual reviews say the year has gone by so fast. But it seems like a very long while since I wrote my review of Debt Advice in 2018. 2019 has been very difficult for debt advice. There have been few bright spots (apart from affordability complaints), a lot of delays to policy decisions being taken and an ever-worsening benefits environment for our clients. 2019 - what happened & … [Read more...]
More payday lenders go under – was anything learned from Wonga?
In the last two months of 2019, Britain's largest payday lender, QuickQuid, went into administration followed by three smaller lenders: 247 Moneybox, PiggyBank and Swift Sterling. Have the lessons from Wonga's collapse last year been leaned? And how can regulators and debt advisers do better in future to protect borrowers, not just of payday loans but other sorts of high cost credit as … [Read more...]
Amigo’s half year 2019 results – the rising cost of paying refunds
Amigo's half-year results for April-September 2019 show a big increase in complaint costs about its guarantor loans. The majority of these complaints are affordability complaints, by the borrower or by the guarantor. Here is the management presentation on the results. What Amigo says about complaints Here my thoughts on some of the points Amigo makes about complaints in the management … [Read more...]
Sunny’s payday lending – concerned about lack of regulatory clarity
In November 2019, many people hoping for a payday loan refund from Sunny were watching for the third-quarter results from Elevate, Sunny's US parent. Would Elevate decide to close Sunny, so they wouldn't get their refunds? In late October QuickQuid had gone into administration after its American parent announced it was exiting the UK. That left Lending Stream, Myjar and Sunny as the largest … [Read more...]
Has Wonga offered you a low settlement? Is this a good offer!
People who still have a loan from Wonga that has not been paid are getting emails with what sounds like a tempting offer: Loan settlement offer to restore your credit record. The offer details are: you only have to pay about 25% of the debt; the debt will be deleted from your credit record if you accept the offer; it says the offer is "time-limited" but doesn't give a date you have to … [Read more...]
Holding Money & Debt up to the Light: Transparency and the Standard Financial Statement
This is a guest post by Dr Joseph Spooner, Assistant Professor of Insolvency Law at the LSE and the author of Bankruptcy – the Case for Relief in an Economy of Debt. He had previously worked at the Law Reform Commission of Ireland, where his papers influenced the enactment of the Irish Personal Insolvency Act 2012. Systems for addressing difficulties of over-indebted households in England … [Read more...]
Amigo – Q1 2019 results show more complaints upheld
On 29 August 2019, Amigo published its financial results for the April-Jun 2019 quarter. I wanted to see how Amigo was going to refer to the very high percentage of complaints against it which have been upheld by the Financial Ombudsman - see 83% of guarantor loan cases won at Financial Ombusdman - and whether Amigo is making any changes because of this. The Amigo announcement Here are … [Read more...]
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