Credit, Collections & Insolvency News
Water regulator, Ofwat has announced the launch of a consultation on how to address increases in bad debt. The consultation aims to strengthen protections for non-household customers who are late paying their bills which the regulator says could result in higher than expected levels of bad debt in the business retail market. In April 2020…
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Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced the extension of several Covid-19 support schemes until the end of September, including the furlough scheme, self-employed income and an extension of the universal credit uplift as part of his budget announcement. In response to the budget debt charity StepChange says that the budget announcement extends much-needed support for people…
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has confirmed changes to its rules to allow for an increase in the single transaction contactless payment threshold from £45 to £100. The contactless threshold for multiple transactions will also increase from £130 to £300. The FCA saya that these changes will allow the industry to increase the limit for…
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Millions of consumers are at risk of being unable to afford their monthly phone bills as a result of mid-contract price hikes according to new research by Tesco Mobile. The findings come as some mobile providers have announced price hikes of up to 4.5 per cent for some SIM-only and pay monthly customers from April.…
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Energy regulator Ofgem has announced that 18 supplier firms failed to correctly protect customers’ tariff prices when they decided to either switch suppliers or tariffs after a price increase. The investigation found that over 1 million customers were overcharged over £7.2 million for the failings. Collectively, the suppliers are issuing refunds and redress payments worth…
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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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