Our starting point is that the borrower has had the benefit of the money they borrowed and it’s fair that they should pay it back. So if a borrower has a complaint upheld and there’s still an outstanding balance on the credit we’ll usually tell the lender to remove all the interest and charges applied from the start – so that a new starting balance consisting of only the amount lent is left – and then deduct any payments already made. If this results in the borrower having paid too much, then any overpayments should be refunded, adding 8% simple interest.
Sometimes there’ll still be an outstanding balance even after all adjustments have been made. But there will be some circumstances when we don’t think this is fair.
One example might be where the lender had enough to know that providing funds to the borrower was so clearly unsustainable, as there was no realistic prospect of them paying back what they were being lent. Another might be where paying back any outstanding amount would cause the borrower financial hardship.
We’re also likely to tell a lender to make sure their customer’s credit file doesn’t have any adverse information recorded about the loans where we’ve identified proportionate checks would have shown that the borrower couldn’t sustainably repay the loan
Where the credit has been used directly to fund the cost of a car we would usually instruct the credit provider to take back the car and cancel any further amounts due. We might also tell the credit provider to refund any deposit payment the consumer has made, with interest. If the consumer has used the car we might think it reasonable for the finance company to keep some, or perhaps all, of the monthly payments made to the finance agreement.
If we e a point where the lender should have realised that any further lending was clearly unsustainable, we’re likely to tell the lender to get these removed from their customer’s credit file completely. Continue reading