Credit, Collections & Insolvency News
Almost half (45 per cent) of finance and banking firms are failing to carry out crucial ‘ghost-buster’ checks on new business clients, newly released data from SmartSearch has shown. ‘Ghost’ firms are false entities created as part of a corporate infrastructure to hide the connection of a criminal beneficiary. They are often used by sophisticated…
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The Bank of England (the Bank), Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) (collectively the supervisory authorities) have set out potential measures to oversee and strengthen the resilience of services provided by critical third parties (CTPs) to the UK financial sector. CTPs provide certain services to regulated financial services firms and financial market…
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Legislation to enhance the competitiveness of UK financial services and unlock growth and investment across the UK has been introduced to Parliament The Financial Services and Markets Bill repeals hundreds of pieces of EU retained law to enable a coherent, agile and internationally respected regime that works in the interests of the British people. The…
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Latest Bank of England figures show that people turning to credit cards and loans to cope with the cost of living crisis are being hit by higher interest rates. Average credit card rates hit 21.43% in June, with this an 0.87 percentage point rise on a year ago when the average credit card rate was…
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has appointed six Directors as it expands its headcount to meet a growing remit. Roma Pearson has been appointed as the FCA’s Director of Consumer Finance, responsible for the supervision and policy development in the consumer lending and mortgages sectors. Roma has been at the FCA and its predecessors since…
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Consumers cut back on credit card borrowing in May, according to figures from the Bank of England. Consumer borrowing fell to a four-month low of £800 million in May, from £1.4 billion in April, with May’s total also below the pre-pandemic average of £1bn. Analysis shows that credit card loans accounted for £400 million of…
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The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has published its provisional decision on remedies for the card-acquiring market review, following its initial consultation earlier this year. Card-acquiring services are crucial to the UK economy because they enable merchants, like newsagents and supermarkets, to accept card payments. This means, every day, people can pay for goods they need, including…
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The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) received nearly 25,000 complaints about current accounts in the year to March, more than any other product. FOS says a big chunk of these were from victims of authorised fraud, such as customers being tricked into transferring money into other accounts often by scammers posing as their bank. Complaints to…
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Regulation of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) credit retail products could prevent up to 876,000 consumers from getting into unmanageable debt this year, according to new research from Barclays and StepChange. The study shows that the rising cost of living is having a direct impact on the popularity of BNPL purchases – over a third…
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The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has announced that it will conduct two market reviews of card fees charged by Visa and Mastercard. The first review will look at why there was a fivefold post-Brexit increase in the cross-border interchange fee that Mastercard and Visa charged retailers for consumer purchases by phone or online in the…
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The Government has announced new plans for the regulation of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL). Under the new rules lenders will be required to ensure loans are affordable and rules will be amended to ensure advertisements are fair, clear and not misleading. The Government will expand rules to cover other forms of unsecured short-term credit…
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has published a list of funeral plan providers it intends to authorise when the pre-paid funeral plans industry comes under its regulation from 29th July. 24 firms are on the list, including the largest funeral plan providers. Together these firms hold approximately 87% of existing customer plans. The FCA is…
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The Government has announced a major reform of the Consumer Credit Act, with this marking an effort to modernise the framework for credit firms. Ministers are looking to give more power to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as part of the changes, which the Government said would enable the regulator to quickly respond to developments…
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