Borrowers in financial difficulty – FCA information request

Following on from the FCA’s Coronavirus-linked Forbearance project, which resulted in the Key Findings report, the FCA said it would be carrying out further work to assess whether firms are implementing their policies and procedures effectively, ensuring these are translated into fair customer outcomes.

One of the elements of this further work will be a piece of multi firm work is to review the delivery of forbearance for customers in financial difficulty.  The FCA is aiming to achieve this by sending out a two-stage information request to around 40 firms. The first stage will be a request for arrears and forbearance data and the second stage will be a request of a sample of customer files. The FCA may also request additional information such as decision trees and/or scripts to help understand the customer outcome.

Firms will have two weeks to review and provide the information requested in Stage 1. Approximately two weeks after the FCA has received this data, it will request 10 customer files from each firm and firms will have up to three weeks to provide the relevant information. The Stage 1 request was sent to firms on Thursday 7 October 2021.

If firms that have been contacted are unable to meet either deadline, they should contact the FCA at BiFDSustainableForbearance@fca.org to discuss whether an extension would be appropriate.

Source: FCA