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  1. Business
  2. Economics
4 October 2012

Panorama shows again that the UK payday loan industry is trouble

The government insists that there is enough regulation. They're wrong, writes Carl Packman.

By Carl Packman

Rochdale, one of the pioneering towns in the UK during the industrial revolution, was a major mill town known for its exemplary textile manufacturing in the nineteenth century. It was also where the first fully documented credit union in the UK was set up in 1844, on which many others were subsequently modelled. 

Now Rochdale is a place blighted by poverty and unemployment (with rates 40 per cent higher than the national average).

It was also the focus of a recent episode of Panorama, showing the burden put on residents by home credit sellers and the wave of payday advance centres like The Money Shop who continue to draw bulging profits at a time of considerable financial hardship.

From various different shops, BBC reporter Richard Bilton collected nearly £1000 with relative ease and little questioning. 

Shockingly, all such shops are covered by the Office for Fair Trading (OFT). In 2010 the OFT’s guidance for creditors on irresponsible lending pointed out that: 

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“All assessments of affordability should involve a consideration of the potential for the credit commitment to adversely impact on the borrower’s financial situation, taking account of information that the creditor is aware of at the time the credit is granted.”

At no point did any of the shops that Bilton entered assess or consider the adverse affects these loans could have on him – thus they were in breach of the OFT’s guidance, as well as the codes of conduct by the Finance & Leasing Association, who independently monitor payday companies.

The problem here is light-touch regulation. In addition to guidance, the OFT can revoke credit licenses, but as David Fisher, OFT’s director of consumer credit, pointed out earlier this year the OFT runs on only £11m with 120 staff in the consumer credit office. The incentive is therefore to let some cases slide.

With Panorama, Bilton also goes undercover and trains with a collection lady from the Provident – a company set up in the nineteenth century to offer loans to those excluded by banks.

A very telling part of the programme shows the lady say perversely of “good customers”, who do pay back money on each loan, that “you don’t ever want them to pay up”.

This itself is indicative of the financial model of the payday lending industry and home credit itself, and really gets to the heart of the matter. Mark J. Flannery and Katherine Samolyk, in an influential paper Payday Lending: Do the Costs Justify the Price?, ask whether payday lenders can survive if they provide only “occasional” credit?

Part of a lender’s schtick is that they only extend short-term credit to people as a quick-fix solution and that their model does not depend on customers rolling over on loans (taking out loans to service an existing loan).

But Flannery and Samolyk observe that, if this were true, such businesses might just survive by the skin of their teeth, though its long-term scale would be far smaller. In other words, for a lender to be completely responsible in their lending, they would have to forego profit maximisation and reduce the lifespan of their business – and given the regulatory landscape currently in force we have to trust them on their word that they follow a self-defeating business model.

Perhaps what was most disconcerting about meeting the collector Bilton shadowed was how unlikeable she was. Resorting to calling customers offensive names and lacking sympathy with them, gave the impression (despite this not being the BBC’s intention) that all agents for home credit lenders are like this. This isn’t the case.

It’s often forgotten that collectors are sometimes just as vulnerable as the people they’re collecting from. One former agent I spoke to, who worked with the Provident, took over the job from a friend who fell ill but wanted to keep her job with the company.

She told me she originally felt the company was respectable because her friend worked for them, though soon realised this wasn’t true when collecting in some of the poorest parts of the area.

“There was a lot of pressure to keep selling”, she continued, “then after 18 weeks, if they couldn’t pay, they’d send in collection agencies”. Furthermore, “managers themselves were giving the green light for lending to people who couldn’t mentally consent, exploiting their disability.”

On several occasions she sacrificed her own commission to disincentivise customers from taking out more loans and offered them her own advice – something Provident itself would not take kindly to.

In spite of this, it is still the government’s position that the UK regulatory architecture is enough. And yet it is evident that self-regulation is failing people in the poorest communities. Until such time that ministers open their eyes these practices will continue under our noses. 

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