What is Consumer Credit?

Consumer Credit

The term consumer credit  refers to different forms of credit agreements available to consumers which are provided by credit institutions, credit unions and retail credit firms.

These types of credit are:

a:    Personal Loan, typical period of loan is 1-5 years. Longer terms are also available.

b:    Hire Purchase, this where a consumer agrees to hire a product / goods from a finance company. At the end of the agreed    period the consumer has the option to purchase the product / goods from the finance company provided that all the    payments have    been made over the agreed period. However, the consumer is not obliged to buy the products / goods.

c:    Credit Sale Agreement, is when a consumer purchases a product / goods from a retailer with the aid of a loan provided by a    finance company (the retailer acts as a credit intermediary in this case). The consumer owns the goods from day one and    they    cannot be repossessed if the consumer defaults on the loan repayments.

d:    Conditional Sale Agreements, this is similar to a hire …

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The Consumer Protection Code 2012 (CPC)

A few notes on the most up to date regulation is perhaps overdue, normally regulation is part of work and not something the general readers care about, but with the increased focus on it we have had people asking how it works so I’ll start to cover some of it.

The Consumer Protection Code (CPC) puts several responsibilities onto financial firms, it offers various protections to consumers and is available on the web.

One of the requirements is for the firm to have a ‘terms of business’ letter which they give to clients prior to offering advice and is covered in section 4.13 of the code.

Using the term ‘independent’ are no longer usable at will. An intermediary can only use the term ‘independent’ in their trading or company name (or in how they describe themselves) if their principle regulated activities are based on fair analysis of the market and it allows the consumer to pay for their …

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