News & Views

The Bank of England's latest Financial Stability Review uses a new measure of household debt burdens, designed to take account of cost-of-living pressures. We provide our assessment, arguing for greater transparency concerning its method of calculation. At present, the Bank may be underplaying the financial stability risks associated with household debt and further interest rate rises could compound this further.

As the cost-of-living crisis deepens, Executive Director, Damon Gibbons, questions whether credit expansion to households is part of the solution, or whether it would be better to extend help to service providers in return for commitments to keep prices down.

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.