Regulating Consumer Credit

by Great Britain: National Audit Office

2012 · The Stationery Office

UK consumers borrowed £176 billion in 2011-12 from credit card companies, small businesses offering hire purchase arrangements and payday lenders. The NAO estimates the Office of Fair Trading saved consumers £8.60 for every £1 it spent on enforcing regulations in 2010-11 by taking action against non-compliant firms. During the same period, nevertheless, consumers lost at least £450 million from problems that regulation did not address, such as malpractice by firms that was not reported to the regulator. Consumers can also make poor choices themselves. The OFT is not resourced to carry out on a day-to-day basis either the supervision of firms or the monitoring of their compliance with licence standards. This means it can act only when it receives information of non-compliant behaviour by a firm. Therefore some harm must already have taken place in order to prevent further losses to consumers. The OFT funds consumer credit regulation solely from licence fees, and today's report shows it had £11.5 million to regulate the market in 2011-12 which is not enough. Furthermore, weaknesses in the OFT's management information mean it cannot be sure these limited resources are being targeted to the areas of greatest risk to consumers. The OFT's limited understanding of the costs of enforcement means it does not have an accurate picture of the proportion of its budget which is spent on different activities. In addition, the OFT does not collect information on the level of lending provided by each firm, and therefore does not have a quantified understanding of the supply in the market