Crooked lenders
Crooked lenders have become a wide spread phenomenon nowadays. People with criminal background set up business as debt collectors or lenders. The Committee of Public Accounts of the UK keeps on criticizing the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for failing to stop such people from obtaining consumer credit license. More precisely, the Committee expressed disappointment that the OFT still doesn’t have routine access to information on criminal convictions to check new credit license applicants. The battle to prevent criminals becoming lenders was being hampered by a lack of so-called “joined-up government”. The MP Edward Leigh stated: “There’s still far too little control to prevent crooked lenders and debt collectors from obtaining a consumer license”. Plus, the Committee said that there’s no proper software that could help to check credit license holders. There’s still little control over crooked lenders that can disable them getting a consumer credit license.
Due to such situation the Consumer Credit Counseling Service (CCCS) proposed the way to improve the situation by raising the cost of consumer credit licenses to deter loan sharks and other crooked lenders. Moreover, the CCCS suggested organizing a free service for people to challenge unfair credit terms and to stop crooked lending activities.