Loan Companies Not Doing Enough To Help Borrowers
There is a curse…”may you live in interesting times!” For anybody involved in the homeowner loan or mortgage industry, the past twelve months or so have indeed been interesting times.
Whether it has been as a bank or building society, loan broker, or someone trying to keep up with the repayments on a homeowner loan, it has been a tough time and many individuals with loans on their properties have fallen behind in their repayments, built up arrears and in some cases, even suffered repossession.
Despite the introduction of various schemes from the government and new arrears handling procedures guidelines for banks and building societies, in order to help those people struggling with their loans to avoid getting into further difficulty, a number of loan debt advice organisations and housing charities have claimed that, although there have been improvements in some lenders arrears handling procedures, many are still not doing enough to help their customers stay out of arrears.
A survey has been conducted recently by Advice UK, Citizens Advice, Money Advice Trust and Shelter, amongst their advisers, to assess the effectiveness of the new procedures.
Of those advisers interviewed, just over half said that they had seen an improvement in the service which was being provided by the majority of mainstream banks and building societies, however this figure was only around 20 per cent when it came to sub-prime loan companies and adverse lenders. This was also found to be the case for borrowers with a secured loan or second charge loan on their home in addition to their main homeowner loan.
As a result of the survey, the various organisations are now calling on all lenders, but particularly those involved with sub-prime and bad credit loans, to fully adopt the new government procedures.
