CCTA View

An “alarming” number of cash-strapped families are being forced to borrow from illegal loan sharks or friends and family, MPs will be told this week. Greg Stevens, who runs the Consumer Credit Trade Association, is expected to accuse the Government of “trying to feed the five thousand with a cheese sandwich” after it introduced an “insufficient” no-interest scheme for those …

The CCTA held a briefing this morning for personal finance journalists and bloggers ranging from the Daily Telegraph to the influential consumer site, DebtCamel. We wanted to talk about what we see as a looming ‘crisis of access’ to credit for those consumers on lower-incomes with the least choices, but also the mass market of credit consumers who we have …

The last few weeks have seen an unprecedented number of press releases from the Financial Conduct Authority regarding the consumer credit industry. The regulator has good intentions like any worthwhile organisation but its current cosseting approach does the consumer a disservice and is consequently narrowing their availability to responsible, regulated credit. In August 2018, Sky News reported on my concerns …

The squeeze on people’s disposable income is growing ever tighter as the need for financial smoothing devices for many of the UK’s workers grows ever more important. New research from Gettasub has found that one third of workers (32 per cent) are actively considering taking a second job in order to stay afloat. In the last month alone, over one …

Today’s announcement by the 1922 Committee has meant we now have another round of madness as Conservative MP’s go for a Leadership Election, at the same time as the Prime Minister cavorts around Europe attempting to give CPR to a corpse. Nero is fiddling even faster as Rome burns. The real danger is that she wins with a majority in …

David Smith, wrote an insightful piece in The Times this week (Nov 27th) on why leaving the EU will be costly, but what is the price of remaining?   David, who spoke at our annual CCTA conference earlier this month, describes how the endgame of the first phase of Brexit is proving “even messier than feared.” Theresa May, by trying …

On 22nd November, the Financial Conduct Authority proposed to introduce a price cap on the rent-to-own (RTO) sector. This will come into force on 1st April 2019, subject to consultation.  Under the proposed cap, credit charges cannot be more than the cost of the product and RTO firms will also need to benchmark the cost of products against the prices charged …

We are pleased to note that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has informed Provident Financial plc that its Home Credit and Satsuma businesses have been fully authorised. In a statement published on the firm’s website, Malcolm Le May, Chief Executive Officer of Provident Financial plc said: “This is excellent news for our customers and testament to the improvements achieved in …

European regulators have been asked to investigate several data brokers, credit rating agencies and adtech companies to see if they are breaching the EU’s new data protection laws. Privacy International, the campaign group, filed a series of complaints to the British, Irish and French data regulators on Thursday against data broker Acxiom, software giant Oracle, credit rating agencies Experian and Equifax …

Yesterday, I was fortunate to be able to represent the views of our members and industry on the BBC Radio 4 You & Yours programme which can be heard here. The 8 minute segment referred to the launch of the Debt Hacker campaign and gave its founder, Alan Campbell the opportunity to lay out his stall regarding Debt Hacker, and …

The FCA has published a ‘Dear CEO’ letter issued to all payday lenders regarding the issues surrounding the increase in complaints about unaffordable lending and how the FCA expect firms to firms to manage the impact.  Lenders have been requested to assess their lending activity to determine whether creditworthiness assessments are compliant and inform the FCA if they are unable …

The recent news that payday loan company, Wonga, has sought a £10million bailout is an ominous reminder of the challenges currently facing the consumer credit industry as regulators, consumer groups, and claims management companies focus their attentions on high cost short term credit providers. The latest document to come from the Financial Conduct Authority details the regulators’ Creditworthiness Policy Statement …