CP24/19: Consumer Credit Regulatory Returns: Credit Broking, Debt Adjusting, Debt Counselling and Providing Credit Information Services

Read CP24/19 (PDF)

Why we are consulting

We want to improve the information we collect from firms so that we can better understand their consumer credit activities and proactively supervise firms to identify and prevent risk of harm to consumers earlier. Collecting better quality information will enhance our ability to identify risk of harm and intervene quicker, in line with our overarching data-led strategy. The design of the new return aims to tailor the set of questions so they are more readily aligned to firms’ business model and activities and use common industry terminology to help understanding.

Who this is for

This consultation is for firms engaged in the following:

• credit broking
• debt adjusting
• debt counselling
• providing credit information services
• advising, representing or providing software to support compliance with regulatory reporting for any of the above firms

Next Steps

This consultation has now closed.

We will publish feedback on responses and issue a Policy Statement once we have reviewed your comments.

As part of this consultation, we are sharing a prototype of the return with firms in scope. The link will be emailed directly to firms before the end of September.

This prototype will allow firms to view the return in a similar way to how they will be required to submit the data in the future, including testing the branching logic used. This will allow them to understand exactly which questions will be relevant to their business and expected to be completed.

Submitting data through the prototype is completely voluntary but will also allow us to further assess that the data we intend to collect meets the needs we have set out in the consultation paper.

We will consider your feedback and aim to publish a final Policy Statement, including our response to feedback, in Spring 2025.

Background

We mainly collect aggregate data using regulatory returns introduced in 2014, when we took over responsibility for consumer credit regulation from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). However, data requirements across consumer credit services have changed significantly.

Since 2014, the way these markets operate has changed. Developments include changes to the way these firms remunerate and incentivise their staff and reforms to credit brokers’ fee structures.

More recently, the Consumer Duty has set higher and clearer standards across markets for consumer protection and the need to put customers’ needs first.

The proposed return will ask firms whether they have been actively undertaking activities and using their permissions and, if not, asking the reason for this to determine whether firms intend to use their permissions. This will significantly improve our ability to proactively identify firms which have incorrect or outdated permissions on the Financial Services Register, ensuring the Register is accurate and up to date on firms’ permissions.