Credit, Collections & Insolvency News
UK Finance has published detailed proposals for a new service company that will support the UK’s world-leading open banking infrastructure. Open Banking (OB) provides a secure way for financial information to be shared across different finance providers. It enables services such as account aggregation, meaning customers who have accounts with a number of banks can…
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The Insolvency Service has published its annual performance data for 2020 about Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs). The figures show that early termination rates of IVAs have dropped 11% in the past year, while total IVAs have risen by almost 20,000 since 2018 and that IVAs have risen steadily on an annual basis since 2015, although…
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The Social Market Foundation (SMF) estimates that nearly 770,000 families are at risk of losing their homes if they suffer a loss in income when a ban on repossessions ends in April. The Social Market Foundation think tank analysed official data and found that of the 770,000 at risk of repossession, a quarter (26%) worked…
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Branch staff at banks, building societies and Post Offices worked with the police to stop £45.3 million of fraud through the Banking Protocol rapid scam response last year, bringing the total amount of fraud prevented to £142 million since the beginning of the scheme, according to the latest figures from UK Finance. Launched in 2016, the Banking Protocol is a UK-wide scheme, developed in…
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced that it has made senior appointments to help drive its transformation programme to build a data-led regulator able to make fast and effective decisions. The FCA announced a restructure in December. This brought together two supervision divisions with the FCA’s policy and competition functions. Following rigorous and wide-ranging…
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has published final guidance clarifying its expectations of firms on the fair treatment of vulnerable customers. The guidance aims to drive improvements in the way firms treat vulnerable consumers so that they are consistently able to achieve outcomes that are as good as everybody else. People can find themselves in…
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Research by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) shows there were 220,000 more households living in destitution by the end of last year. The pandemic has helped push the figure up to 421,500 households – with destitution defined as a two-adult household living on less than £100 a week and a single-adult…
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The House of Lords will this week debate an amendment to the Financial Services Bill to ensure a ‘fair debt-write down’ is incorporated within Government’s plans for a Statutory Debt Repayment Plan. The amendment, which has been tabled by former Green Party Leader Baroness Bennett and the Bishop of St Albans, seeks to make it…
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Credit Connect Media announced that it has launched a new event called the Lending Technology Think Tank which will take place on Thursday 22nd April. The event will focus on technological and innovational developments and strategies within lending. The inaugural Think Tank is a multi-session event that includes a diverse range of speakers and is…
Read moreLatest statistics from the Insolvency Service have shown that personal insolvencies in England & Wales decreased by 13.7% to 8,305 in January 2020 compared to December’s figure of 9,623, and were 20.8% lower than January 2020’s figure of 10,482. Overall, numbers of individual insolvencies have remained low since the start of the first UK lockdown…
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Almost two million workers were unemployed or fully furloughed in January and had been for at least six months highlighting the scale of lasting damage to the UK’s labour force that will need to be addressed in the Budget, according to major new research published by the Resolution Foundation. The report titled Long Covid in…
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New research by the Fabian Society has found that over 700,000 people in working or disabled households are to be pulled into poverty by universal credit cuts. The government has indicated that they will decide in early March whether to keep or scrap the temporary 12-month Covid payment giving claimants just a month to plan…
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The Government has announced that renters will continue to be supported during the ongoing national lockdown restrictions, with an extension to the ban on bailiff evictions extended until 31st March. The ban on bailiff evictions was introduced at the start of the pandemic means that the ban has been extended for another six weeks with…
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