Now that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced a £7.5bn redress scheme for customers who were mis-sold car finance, up to 12 million car buyers could be owed compensation. But that also means there will be scammers out to prey on unsuspecting consumers with promises of easy money.
As part of the scheme, lenders will be required to contact eligible customers who have not already lodged claims. To help streamline the scheme and reduce costs to lenders, the FCA has dropped a previously planned requirement for lenders to use recorded delivery letters, and will now allow ‘a range of communication channels’ instead. But that opens the door for scammers posing as lenders to catch out unwary customers.
Anyone receiving a phone call, text message or email about potential car finance compensation should immediately be suspicious. Do not give out any personal information – end the call, do not reply to the email or click on any links in the email, and do not call any phone number that claims to be from your lender.
You can then contact your lender yourself and in your own time, and the best way to guarantee that you’re talking to the genuine lender is to check their contact details on the FCA website, or by calling the FCA’s scams helpline (0800 111 6768), before calling, emailing or filling in any online forms.
The FCA has given lenders clear instructions on how to handle customer claims, deadlines to respond to customer claims and deadlines to contact customers who may be eligible for compensation. You don’t need to pay any company to handle your compensation claim on your behalf. You are entitled to join a class action or engage a claims management company to act on your behalf if you wish, and they may claim that they could earn you more money than by using the free FCA process, but the FCA is advising against this and so are we. The FCA’s free claims process is designed to ensure that eligible customers get fairly compensated for any losses.
Customers have until August 2027 to lodge a car finance claim, so we are going to see a lot of news coverage and a lot of advertising from claims management firms for the next 18 months or so. But that also means that there will be plenty of scammers around over that same period, so customers need to beware.
