Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k custs

[Wombats]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

Blair Oliver Scott ???? I can't find any CCL for them. and they aren't a solicitors firm.

Bank of Scotland Plc Firm name: Bank of Scotland Plc
Interim Permissions reference number: 593292

EC2V 7HN /
EH1 1YZ

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CCA Home Page :: CCA Search :: CCA Search Results :: Licence Details

Application / Licence Details

Licence Number:0322750
Licence Status:Current

Current Applicant / Licensee:

Business Name	Company Registration Number
Blair, Oliver And Scott Limited	133457

Categories:

Debt collecting

Right To Canvass Off Trade Premises:No


Issued Date: 19-Sep-1991
Date Maintenance Payment Due: 11-Oct-2016


Legal Formation:

[EXC]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

From Financial Times:


The FT can disclose that the Office of Fair Trading intervened earlier this year to ask the Student Loans Company to change the wording on its letters because they were potentially misleading.

Letters to indebted graduates had been sent with a masthead from an agency called “Smith Lawson & Company Recovery Services”, as highlighted by the Buzzfeed news site.

Some letters used phrases such as, “We are instructed by our client”, which appeared to indicate that Smith Lawson is an independent firm. There was also a Smith Lawson email address. Phone calls on Friday to the business were met with a voicemail that did not refer to the Student Loans Company.

Only in the small print at the bottom of the letters did it say that this was a trading name for the government body. The organisations share the same registered address in Bristol.

Earlier this year the OFT – which has since been folded into a new regulator – intervened to get the SLC to change the wording of the letters. “The letters . . . are no longer issued by SLC, having been revised following discussions with the OFT earlier this year,” the quango said. “This includes reference to the word ‘client’ in communications.”

Many graduates, after receiving the letters, expressed their fears online that their debts were in the hands of an independent collection agency – unaware that Smith Lawson was merely a pseudonym for the not-for-profit government agency.

The SLC said it introduced Smith Lawson as a “cost-saving exercise” because the use of conventional debt collection agencies required the payment of commission. Asked why the SLC did not issue the letters under its own name, the agency replied: “The use of a secondary brand is part of SLC in-house recovery process, all letters issued in the initial stages of recovery are all branded Student Loans.”

[Amethyst]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

..but does the licence allow Debt collection Activities?

They can collect their own debt in their own name, but add a name, that's a different situation altogether.

---

Firm name:		Student Loans Company Limited
Interim Permissions reference number:		294229

Consumer credit business	Entering into a regulated credit agreement as lender; and exercising, or having the right to exercise, the lender's rights and duties under a regulated credit agreement.	Active
Debt administration	Debt administration	Active
Debt collecting	Debt collecting	Active

No right to canvass off trade premises

[mystery1]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

First thing that jumps out is that £50 should be a REFUND not compensation !

Compensation should be for the additional stress caused and would be a flat rate compensation paid now, on which basis I was okay with the £50.

However this is a fee added to the account of £50 in 2010 - so should be refunded, plus all interest that fee attracted (contractual interest!), plus 8% simple stat interest per annum.

and that refund should be as well as compensation.


They don't say solicitors, but they use words like instructed and our client etc which is a clear effort to intimate they are solicitors.

(I missed BBC breakfast so sorryif I'm just repeating what was said on there)

http://www.fca.org.uk/news/wonga-red...tion-practices

Compensation will consist of the following:


A refund of charges on referral to Barker and Lowe/Chainey D’Amato which has been estimated at £400,000 and will be provided to customers who paid these fees.


A flat rate £50 settlement offer to all 45,000 customers sent letters for distress and inconvenience.

In some cases, an additional compensation payment dependent on individual circumstances.

M1

[meellis]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

There is a can of worms here that needs to be opened but whether it will be we shall see. Even after everything that has happened there is a fair percentage of people who will believe that all of these financial companies are struggling down to bad debtors and overstretched clients but scratch below the surface and you will find lots of things that are deeply questionable on legal, moral and ethical grounds, all done in the pursuit of profit. As for the FSA/FCA I am unsure how it works, I can't see how anybody can ignore an issue just because they weren't in charge at the time. That sounds very like a coalition statement along the lines of "these are problems we have inherited from the previous government". Does this mean that everything that the OFT was investigating has been completely wasted, no wonder they didn't seem to interested over the last few years. Having said that though is it not the police who investigate criminal matters anyway, do the FCA just present them with a case and evidence? I am concerned about this getting passed off as just blackmail and intimidation though because it is a lot more than that. Even though blackmail and intimidation is a serious matter I feel it is something that a good barrister could lesson so only a token punishment would be passed. How could you value the cost of intimidation baring in mind a lot of the people were probably getting harassed by others at the time.

[Nibbler]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

Standard consumer credit license allows a company to carry all authorised activities under any name on their license AFAIK.

[Amethyst]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

Do they have interim permissions ? http://fca-consumer-credit-interim.f...rSearchPageNew


(ie FCA register )

CCA Home Page :: CCA Search :: CCA Search Results :: Licence Details

Application / Licence Details

Licence Number:0322750
Licence Status:Current

Current Applicant / Licensee:

Business Name	Company Registration Number
Blair, Oliver And Scott Limited	133457

Categories:

Debt collecting

Right To Canvass Off Trade Premises:No


Issued Date: 19-Sep-1991
Date Maintenance Payment Due: 11-Oct-2016


Legal Formation:

[Amethyst]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

http://www.fca.org.uk/news/wonga-red...tion-practices

Compensation will consist of the following:


A refund of charges on referral to Barker and Lowe/Chainey D’Amato which has been estimated at £400,000 and will be provided to customers who paid these fees.


A flat rate £50 settlement offer to all 45,000 customers sent letters for distress and inconvenience.

In some cases, an additional compensation payment dependent on individual circumstances.

M1

So is the £50 ''settlement offer'' for distress and inconvenience on TOP of the £50 plus decent interest refund of the charge ?? (if you had the charge)

Works out about 8000 people having the charges if its just flat £50 refund. They were charged contractual interest ON the £50 so should get that back, plus 8%.

I guess we won't really know till people start getting the refunds.

[Amethyst]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

2) As we hold a Consumer Credit Licence, the Student Loans Company
Limited (“SLC”) and Smith Lawson adhere to the Office of Fair Trading
Debt Collections Guidance which outlines Collections Agents’ conduct
on the telephone. We also adhere to the Credit Services Association
(“CSA”). The CSA is the self-regulatory body for the collections
Industry.


from: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/reque...ompany_informa

---

SL01 0812 Redacted.pdf
93K Download View as HTML
SL02 0812 Redacted.pdf
89K Download View as HTML
SLBA1 2012 Redacted.pdf
90K Download View as HTML
SLOB1 2012 Redacted.pdf
85K Download View as HTML


(lol - if you look at the HTML version the redacting

''1) Please refer to the attached template letters that are used by Smith
Lawson to send to debtors. Please note that any names, addresses,
customer reference numbers or arrears amounts have been redacted to
ensure that no-one’s personal information is being disclosed.''

hasn't worked as the name and address is in the document information and the header is backwards.)

anyway

one of those templates says

I have to inform you that if you fail to make payment as requested, I will have no option but
to request that my client terminates your agreement and proceeds with legal action for the
recovery of the full loan balance

[Nibbler]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

Well, the guy from the law society seemed to think that any letters that try to give the impression they are from a law firm when they are not, could well fall foul of the same thing as Wonga.

From what I can see from the FCA the main concern they had was the deceptiveness and undue pressure they put on people, and not strictly the licensing status etc.

[EXC]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

Here's the Student Loans Buzzfeed piece with an example of a Smith Lawson & Company letter http://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/...an-independent

[Amethyst]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu



:behindsofa:

[meellis]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

Isn't it funny how wording things can make them sound different and come into different rules. Deceptiveness leading to undue pressure is a different animal that deceptiveness leading to financial gain. One gives you the impression of a loan shark at your door with a baseball bat and the other the impression of somebody sitting behind a desk counting the money they have just taken from you for something they shouldn't. Both immoral, both un-ethical and surely both illegal but which is worse or should there always be a reminder that they are committing both?

[Guest]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

The consumer credit license issue is problematic , in taht although it is a criminal offence not to have one, only in as much as punitive sanctions can be imposed for breach, the breaches are of the act which is in effect civil legislature , so it is not as if you can report them to the police, it has to be enforced by the regulatory body and then only as a breach of the CCA.
In addition CCAa section 170 states that , no further sanctions can be imposed upon a breach of the act other than those mentioned within it, the CCA gives wide ranging powers and discretion to fines and other remedies it imposes , and to be honest a breach of as licensing arrangement when the company already has one (although arguably not the correct category) is not going to give them much of a problem.

[meellis]

Re: Wonga to pay redress for unfair debt collection practices – FCA - £2.6m to 45k cu

So effectively its a criminal offence that isn't a criminal offence, that's clear no wonder we all make mistakes when we are brought up believing there is right and wrong.