In June 2019, the bank regulator, the FCA, announced its new rules about overdraft charges. It called these: the biggest shake-up to the overdraft market for a generation. The new rules come into effect from April 2020 - that's a long while to wait if you are currently paying very high overdraft fees. And how much effect will they actually have? Fees will be getting simpler The new rules … [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.
And for my weekly round-ups of debt and poverty news items, see Weekly News Summaries.
Amigo 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. So far as I know, 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 … [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...]
SpeedyCash in administration – send affordability claims by end July 2019
SpeedyCash had several high-street stores which stopped lending in 2017. It was the trading name of SRC Transatlantic Limited which went into administration at the end of February 2019. SpeedyCash had c 183,000 former customers. If you borrowed from SpeedyCash, you may have a claim for unaffordable lending. An unaffordable loan is one you could not repay, or which you only repaid with … [Read more...]
Aperture – no longer taking new IVAs
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 Solutions LLP has recently taken the decision to suspend our client acquisition strategy in the IVA sector; as such, we will be unable to deal with your client referrals with … [Read more...]
Loans2Go’s interest rate – “outrageous” – how to complain
In January, a reader told me about a loan he had for £650, with 18 monthly repayments of £147. This adds up to a total repayment of £2,650 - an eye-watering amount and more than four times what he borrowed. At first I thought this was probably taken out years ago. But in fact, it was borrowed in late 2018 from Loans2Go. Loans2Go also offer logbook loans, but this article is just about their … [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...]
Optimism bias, the planning fallacy & debt advice
Research shows that most people underestimate the chance of a negative event and overestimate the chance of a positive event happening to them. This is called Optimism bias as it results in us having an unrealistically optimistic view of the future. For example: although about half of Western marriages end in divorce, few people getting married think it may happen to them; and we … [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...]
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