The Financial Conduct Authority ('FCA') is in the final stages of consulting on its proposals for a new Consumer Duty, which focuses on ensuring improved outcomes for users of financial services and products. In this briefing we consider how the proposed duty could help to address long-standing problems associated with ‘relending’ in the UK’s consumer credit markets.

Earlier this week, CfRC Director, Damon Gibbons participated in Tech Nation's Finclusion events as a panellist in the 'Products for the People' session arranged by Auden. Drawing on our experience of rent-flex, he argued that it is no longer helpful to think of exclusion in a binary fashion. People are not only excluded or included. They are part of a broad spectrum. Digital services need to start from where the customer is at. There are limitations to the extent to which digital can meet peoples' needs and hand-overs to phone and face-to-face services pose considerable challenges.

Prior to the lockdown, CfRC’s Executive Director, Damon Gibbons, participated in an event run by IFF Research about creative problem solving. His speech identified expenditure demands relative to income at specific points in time as the cause of most financial difficulty. Solutions need to help expenditure flex over time rather than focus on increasing temporary income levels through access to credit.

Even before the Covid 19 pandemic 7.2 million people (fourteen percent of the population) were heavily burdened by debt. It’s time to write down the debt.