Information on number of approved applications - August 2022

FOI Release Date of Release:

Reference Case Number: FOI9434

Freedom of Information: Right to know request:

  1. How many applications have there been over the last three years, and how many have been approved in:
    • High-Cost Short-Term Credit
    • Home-collected
    • Guarantor lending
    • Pawnbroking
  2. Secondly, I wonder does the FCA collect data about companies that have surrendered their authorisation?  If so we would be interested in those numbers across those categories.

FCA response:

Question 1

The below table includes data on new firms entering the respective markets and existing firms moving into the market via a variation of permissions.

Market

Applications

Withdrawn

Rejected

Assessed

Approvals

High-Cost Short-Term Credit (HCSTC)

13

11

0

2

0

Home-Collected Credit

7

2

4

1

0

Guarantor Lending

4

2

0

2

0

Pawnbroking

51

26

2

5

18

Question 2

We do record details of firm that surrendered their permissions.  The information below includes the number of firms that have either removed the relevant High-Cost permissions (but continue to hold other permissions) or have cancelled their permissions entirely and are no longer regulated.

For HCSTC, 54 firms have removed or cancelled their permissions (this includes eight Pawnbrokers that surrendered their HCSTC permissions). A total of three are in the process of cancelling their permissions. 

For Home Collected Credit, 57 firms have removed or cancelled their permissions and there is a total of 23 that are in the process of doing so. 

Two firms have removed both their HCSTC and Home Collected Credit permissions.

For Guarantor Lending, two firms have cancelled their lending permissions and two are currently in the process of doing so. 

For Pawnbrokers, 33 firms have cancelled their lending permissions and three are currently in the process of cancelling their permissions.