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 difficulty, getting behind with essential bills or having to borrow again.

The compensation – which the Administrators call “redress” – for an unaffordable loan is usually a refund of the interest you paid.

Outstanding loans

Some of the outstanding loans have been sold to Lantern. If your loan has been sold to Lantern you will have received an email about this from Lantern.

If you had an outstanding loan and it has not been sold to Lantern, the Administrators will be in touch and it will be written off.

Making an affordability complaint

The Administrators have announced the procedures for customers to send in Claims if they think they had unaffordable SpeedyCash loans.

Here is my summary:

• a website has been set up with full details about the administration including a link to FAQs;
• if you think you were given unaffordable loans by SpeedyCash, you should send a Claim to the administrators. See below for how to send a Claim;
• if you have already sent SpeedyCash a complaint, or you had a complaint with the Financial Ombudsman, you still need to send in a Claim;
• the deadline for Claims is midnight on 31st July 2019, any Claims after that are not likely to be processed;
• the Administrators will decide which Claims are valid and the value of each valid Claim;
• there is not enough money to refund all the interest on unaffordable loans in full, so you will only get a proportion of this amount. How much will not be known for many months, but it is expected to only be a low “pence in the pound”;
• payments are likely to be made by the end of April 2020.

How to send in a Claim

The administrators have provided a claim form for customers who want to make a claim for unaffordable lending.

Completing this form:

• you are “the creditor” because you are saying that you are owed money;
• box 4 is for the amount you are claiming. If you leave this blank, the Administrators will calculate the amount for you. If you put in an amount, it should include the additional 8% statutory interest that is added;
• in box 5, if you are asking the Administrators to calculate the amount, this can be very brief, eg “Loans between 2012-4”, you don’t need to list them. If you used a different name or email address at that time, put those in here so the Administrators can trace your loans.
  But if you have calculated an amount, you should attach details of how you did this and why you chose those loans to be refunded;
• in box 6, put your bank account sort code and account number;
• box 7 is already completed. You will be contacted if the Administrators need more evidence to link you with the loans in the system.

You should email the signed form to claims.src@kpmg.co.uk.

Is it worth doing this?

You may only get a small amount back, but this is a simple form to complete if you ask the Administrators to do the calculation, so I would say it is worth it.

I am not sure it is worth spending a lot of time trying to do the calculation yourself. Especially as you won’t get all of it refunded even if the Administrators accept your Claim. If you want to do this, remember that the Administrators will be trying to roughly follow what the Financial Ombudsman does, and that most people do not get a refund of the first few loans if they take a case to the Financial Ombudsman.

Photo credit: Ewan Munro

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