Debt news and policy Archives

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.

Guarantor loans – more refunds being paid!

In May 2019, adjudicators at the Financial Ombudsman (FOS) made several dozen decisions upholding affordabilty complaints by people with Amigo loans. Amigo has accepted all these decisions and has paid out refunds. These adjudicator decisions are not published by FOS but readers have sent me copies of them. This article has some extracts so you can see what FOS is looking at in guarantor loan … [Read more...]

Credit card minimum payments – developments from 2000 to 2019

This is a guest post from The Money Charity, the UK's financial capability charity. If you would like to receive its monthly statistical report The Money Statistics, sign up here. This paper was written as background research for The Money Charity’s responses to the Financial Conduct Authority consultations on the short term credit market. As a reference document it may be of interest to … [Read more...]

Aperture – no longer taking new IVAs from June 2019

UPDATE in September 2020, Aperture sold its 25,000 open IVAs to Jarvis. See Major changes for thousands of customers with Aperture & Vanguard IVAs for details. Aperture has told many debt advisers it will not take referrals for Individual Voluntary Arrangements after the end of June 2019. The debt advice firms received an email saying: I write to inform you that Aperture Debt … [Read more...]

Money Shop – redundancy plans and stores closing

UPDATE - June 15th Money Shop to close – two million customers will be informed On June 21 the Daily Mail reported that : In a letter sent to employees and seen by This is Money, ICL said it plans to close or sell off all of its UK stores following 'poor financial performance' and an 'unprecedented number of customer complaints'. The Money Shop has already shut down or sold … [Read more...]

Panorama’s “Easy money, Tough debt”

Panorama on 17 June 2019 showed Easy Money, Tough Debt? It's on iPlayer for 11 months if you missed it. It covered a wide range of high cost borrowing, with stories from people who had problems with payday loans, with high-cost credit cards and catalogues, and guarantor loans, with a borrower and a guarantor being featured. Everyday stories of high cost borrowing For a debt adviser, these … [Read more...]

Record numbers of CCJs in 2019 & for smaller amounts

On May 13, the statistics for CCJs for the first quarter of 2019. were published by Registry Trust, who keeps the records of CCJs in England and Wales. There were more than 320,000 consumer CCJs in the three months, the highest number recorded for a quarter. Consumers are being sued more often for smaller amounts of money The graph shows how the number of CCJs in the first quarter of … [Read more...]

Payday lenders tired of having to pay so many refunds – unsurprising!

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) published its Annual Review this week which highlighted the massive jump in payday loan complaints - up 130% to c.40,000 in 2018-19. The Consumer Finance Association (CFA) has responded with a blog "Reflecting on the FOS Annual Review". The CFA is the trade association for payday lenders, so you won't be surprised they are not happy... Mandy Rice-Davies's … [Read more...]

Q1 2019 – IVA numbers – the upward trend continues

On 30 April the Insolvency Service published the personal insolvency statistics for the first quarter of 2019. Comparing this quarter to the last quarter of 2018: bankruptcy and DRO numbers were about the same; IVA numbers dropped from 22,943 in Q4 2018 to 20,325 in Q1 2019. The upward trend of IVAs continues It is a mistake to make too much of this fall in IVA numbers, because the … [Read more...]

Guarantor loans – why guarantors & borrowers need extra protection

Guarantor loans are coming into the regulatory spotlight. The FCA wrote to CEOs in March 2019 saying it will be looking at affordability and whether potential guarantors have enough information to understand how likely it is that they may have to make the loan payments. In a speech, Jonathan Davis said: Recent work we have done in this area showed that many guarantors are making at least 1 … [Read more...]

2018 FOS statistics – most complaints about QuickQuid

New statistics for July-December 2018 from the Financial Ombudsman (FOS) show how payday loan complaints have jumped in the second half of 2018 and give details for how many complaints the larger lenders had. Almost all these cases are affordability complaints where a customer was given payday loans without proper affordability checks and is asking for a refund of interest paid. The … [Read more...]