Credit, Collections & Insolvency News
National Audit Office’s (NAO) report into Universal Credit suggests that the government’s flagship benefits system has been too slow to roll out, causes hardship, and is not delivering value for money. The NAO says the £1.9bn Universal Credit system could end up costing more to administer than the benefits system it is replacing. Some claimants waited…
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Yahoo! UK Services Limited has been fined £250,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) following a cyber-attack in November 2014. The incident was publicly disclosed in September 2016, almost two years after it had taken place. Because of when the breach happened, the ICO’s investigation was carried out under the Data Protection Act 1998. The ICO said…
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Three directors of a debt management company have been banned from running companies for 29 years. Robert Solloway, Mark Harrison and Richard Mott, were all directors of RMR Financial Services Limited, which traded as Compass Debt Counsellors, a debt management company. Robert Solloway served as a director throughout, while Mark Harrison and Richard Mott were…
Read moreThe Welsh Government has launched a plan to end prison sentences for non-payment of council tax. Regulations will be brought forward in early 2019 to prevent any more people being jailed for council tax debt in Wales, pending the outcome of a 12-week consultation. Unlike other forms of civil debt, courts have the power to…
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The Credit Services Association (CSA), the voice of the UK debt collection and debt purchase sectors, has confirmed the full programme for this year’s UK Credit and Collections Conference (UKCCC), including a keynote address by Romana Pearson, Head of Consumer Credit at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The conference is divided into morning and afternoon…
Read moreThe Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined Canara Bank £896,100 and has imposed a restriction, preventing it from accepting deposits from new customers for 147 days. Financial services firms are required to maintain robust anti-money laundering (AML) systems and controls since they are at risk from those seeking to launder the proceeds of crime or…
Read moreSSE has agreed to pay £1 million to Ofgem’s consumer redress fund after providing some pre-payment meter (PPM) customers with inaccurate and misleading information in annual statements. Ofgem launched an investigation into the supplier in November last year after SSE reported the issue to the regulator. The investigation found that, between June 2014 and September…
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced it will investigate TSB over its IT problems. The regulator will launch an investigation over the bank’s failure to be open and transparent with customers when an IT upgrade went wrong, locking as many as 1.9 million customers out of their accounts. In a letter to the Commons Treasury…
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Following the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announcement on reform rent to own and overdraft reforms, industry figures have reacted on the news. Eric Leenders, Managing Director, Personal Finance at UK Finance said “People up and down the country use credit as a helpful means of managing their everyday spending, so we have been working closely…
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Ofgem has launched an investigation into the way that Utility Warehouse manages its customers who are in debt. Ofgem will investigate whether the supplier has breached rules related to the way it manages these customers, particularly whether it puts in place appropriate repayment options for its indebted customers. This includes whether it does enough to…
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced new proposals designed to protect millions of people who use overdrafts and high-cost credit. The changes the FCA are consulting on follow an in-depth review into the high-cost credit market and are expected to reduce the costs for consumers and give them greater control over their finances. These…
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Latest figures from the Financial Ombudsman (FOS) show that complaints about borrowing – ranging from store cards to payday loans – have risen by 40% in the past year. Concerns have been raised about lenders’ treatment of customers with high-cost loans. Excluding complaints about payment protection insurance, almost one in four complaints to the ombudsman…
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Today (25th May) marks the biggest change to UK data protection law in a generation. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is an evolution of the current Data Protection Act (1998) and comes into effect today. Regulated by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the new law gives people more control about how their data is…
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