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.

More than a third of IVAs fail – and this may get worse

This post was written based on statistics published in 2022. Since then, statistics have been complicated by the special measures during COVID that temporarily prevented many IVAs from failing. Statistics published in early 2024 show: one in three (33%) IVAs that started between 2016 and 2018 failed of IVAs that started in 2022, 5.6% failed in the first year. This was about the same as … [Read more...]

Why the FSCS doesn’t cover payday and other lenders

In 2018, when Wonga went into administration, people started asking why the Financial Ombudsman (FOS) can't still look at Wonga complaints? And if FOS can't, is there is a guarantee system that would step in if Wonga fails, such as the FSCS? This has become more important every year since then, with most of the major payday lenders failing, including the Money Shop, QuickQuid, Sunny and … [Read more...]

ICL / Money Shop Scheme ends

A first payment of 4.31p in the £ was paid in May/June 2021. A second, much smaller payment of 0.65p in the £ is being paid on 14 or 18 January 2022. If you do not receive this second payment, see below for what to do. Background to the Scheme This "Scheme of Arrangement" covers borrowers from the ICL brand names, Money Shop, Payday UK and Payday Express, who were given … [Read more...]

Amigo proposes a second Scheme – but is it fairer?

UPDATE - in May 2022, the court approved the new Amigo Scheme. See Amigo's Scheme for details On 13 December 2021, Amigo proposed its new Scheme of Arrangement. The Practice Statement Letter (PSL) is a 21-page overview of the new Scheme. The numbers in the PSL have now changed Amigo says: We hope a successful new Scheme will also allow a changed Amigo, under a new management team, … [Read more...]

Amigo now lets some people pause paying – the right of Equitable Set Off

UPDATES In November 2023, Amigo started deleting some loans from people's credit records. it says "In this situation, it is probable that the claim has been either fully or partially upheld" That may make you feel more comfortable choosing equitable set-off. The deadline for making a claim to the Amigo Scheme was in November 2022 - it is now too late to make a claim. If you have not made a … [Read more...]

Amigo – no second Scheme before April at the earliest

On 29 November 2021, Amigo published its results for the six months ended 30 September 2021. Amigo's first Scheme of Arrangement was rejected by the Court in May. Since then, Amigo has been trying to come up with a new Scheme that is fairer to the customers given unaffordable loans. Amigo says: "the proposed contribution to the new Scheme will be significantly increased from that of the … [Read more...]

Bank accounts for all sorts of bad credit problems, even bankruptcy

In 2016 the major UK banks all introduced new "basic bank accounts". One of the main aims was to widen bank account access to groups of people who have found it difficult or impossible to open an account: people who have gone bankrupt previously found it very hard to get a bank account; people in an IVA, DRO or debt management need to change bank accounts and have the overdraft on their … [Read more...]

ClearScore adopts the new Equifax credit scoring out of 1000

In mid November 2021, ClearScore has finally adopted the new 1000 Equifax credit scores. Equifax credit scoring changed in April 2021, when it switched to calculating scores out of 1000 - they used to be calculated out of 700. It also changed the bands used to describe your credit rating. Equifax didn't make an announcement about these changes. The Equifax Credit Report & Score was … [Read more...]

Amigo’s Scheme 1st scheme – the timetable that ended in rejection

UPDATE In May 2022, the new Amigo Scheme was approved by the court and went live. See Amigo’s Scheme for details about this. This page on the old Scheme is now no longer relevant. Please leave any comments and questions on that new page. The approval process for the first Scheme (this ended in rejection) On 30 March, the First Court Hearing gave the go-ahead for Amigo to organise the … [Read more...]

The 2021 IVA protocol – what has changed & will it stop mis-selling?

The IVA Protocol 2021 was published in April 2021. This replaces the old 2016 Protocol which should not be used for new IVAs after 1 August 2021. The terms of IVAs already in progress are not affected by the new version. The new Protocol aims to be easier to understand for people in debt - for example "debtor" has been replaced by "consumer" and it has been put into the typical "gov.uk … [Read more...]