If Amigo’s proposed Scheme of Arrangement goes forward, customers with complaints at the Financial Ombudsman (FOS) will have them returned to Amigo to resolve in the Scheme. My guess is that there may be 10,000 Amigo cases at FOS, possibly a lot more. If these customers would have had a cash refund, then they are likely to only get paid a very small amount of their redress. Some of them have … [Read more...]
Articles about Amigo
These articles are about Amigo itself, the company and its finances.
For articles about guarantor loan complaints, including the templates for how to complain if you are a borrower or if you are a guarantor, see Guarantor loans complaints.
Amigo’s Scheme – who’s next? Implications for the bad credit market
If Amigo's proposed Scheme of Arrangement is allowed to go forward by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), what would be the impact on the guarantor market and the wider bad credit market? This article looks at whether other lenders would also seek the protection of a Scheme and the implications for competition in the market. This is the second of three articles looking at: The effect … [Read more...]
Will an Amigo Scheme of Arrangement abandon vulnerable customers?
We still know very few details about Amigo's proposed Scheme of Arrangement. I asked some questions in Amigo seeks refuge from complaints and made some estimates of the payouts consumers might get in Amigo - estimated numbers don’t look good. But there are other, wider-ranging issues about Amigo's proposed Schemes of Arrangement. So this is the first of a series of three articles: The … [Read more...]
Amigo Scheme – my estimated numbers don’t look good
When Amigo announced it was seeking a Scheme of Arrangement on 21 December 2020, I said there were very few details and asked some questions. This article looks at some possible numbers to see how this Scheme might pan out if the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) allows it to proceed. I am interested in: how Amigo can assess claims in line with Financial Ombudsman decisions what … [Read more...]
Amigo seeks refuge from complaints in a Scheme of Arrangement
Amigo announced on 21 December 2020 that it is seeking approval for a Scheme of Arrangement in order to cap the amount it has to pay to customers who were mis-sold unaffordable loans. It has put up a FAQ page on its website. The announcement says: Whilst the Scheme will not enable all claims relating to customer redress issues arising from unaffordable lending ("Redress Claims") to be paid in … [Read more...]
Board room bust-up at Amigo
March 2020 On 4 March 2020 the founder and majority shareholder of Amigo, James Benamor, resigned from the board which he had only rejoined in December and published a blog saying that the company was: committing slow motion suicide. Benamor said the board needed to choose between challenging recent FOS decisions on affordability complaints in court by Judicial Review or accept that "almost all … [Read more...]
Amigo won’t give details about how many complaints it has in July 2020
On 20 July 2020 Amigo published its results for the year ending 31 March 2020. The financial headlines: Amigo made a loss after tax for 2019-20 of £27.2m. For the previous year this had been a profit of £88.6m; no guidance on financial performance for 2020-21 was given because it is too early to assess the impact of Covid-19; it had cash in the bank of over £135m at 30 June … [Read more...]
Amigo’s half year 2019 results – the rising cost of paying refunds
Amigo's half-year results for April-September 2019 show a big increase in complaint costs about its guarantor loans. The majority of these complaints are affordability complaints, by the borrower or by the guarantor. Here is the management presentation on the results. What Amigo says about complaints Here my thoughts on some of the points Amigo makes about complaints in the management … [Read more...]
Amigo – Q1 2019 results show more complaints upheld
On 29 August 2019, Amigo published its financial results for the April-Jun 2019 quarter. I wanted to see how Amigo was going to refer to the very high percentage of complaints against it which have been upheld by the Financial Ombudsman - see 83% of guarantor loan cases won at Financial Ombusdman - and whether Amigo is making any changes because of this. The Amigo announcement Here are … [Read more...]