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...]
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.
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...]
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...]
PPI – deadline for new complaints has now passed
In 2017, the FCA launched a PPI advertising campaign telling you to make a decision about claiming PPI, because a deadline was being introduced. That August 29 2019 deadline has now passed and you can't start a new PPI complaint. If you have a complaint already in progress, the MSE forum is a good place to ask questions about it. And if your complaint has been rejected, send it to 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...]
Why is QuickQuid going to delete old customer data?
QuickQuid has told some customers that it plans to delete loan data over seven years old with effect from today, 15th April 2019. It says this is to comply with its legal obligations. QuickQuid has sent emails to the affected customers asking if they would like a copy of their data before it is deleted. It seems to me that this new policy is not in the customers' interest because it will … [Read more...]
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