Payday lenders a minor player in Brits’ overall debt burden

Brits collectively owe nearly sixty billion pounds and, for once, short term loans companies can hardly be blamed as most of the debt is owed to a variety of sources and just a “smattering” to them.

The astonishing level of debt that people have got themselves into was revealed by the Credit Services Association (CSA) which represents the debt collection agency industry.

Apparently various government bodies have gradually been using debt collection agencies as a way of getting back the money owed to them rather than use their own staff.

The amount of debt has grown by ten percent alone in the last half of last year and, according to the CSA, has been growing steadily over the last few years.

The government agencies are not the only bodies trying to recover their lost loot. Most organisations who use one debt collection agency or another are the usual money lenders, like banks, building societies and credit card holders, with short term loans lenders coming in quite a bit to the rear.

Utility companies like fuel, electricity and water as well as phone companies are well represented in the queue to collect unpaid debt from those who owe it.

It seems that there are a lot of organisations and companies who do not like getting their hands dirty trying to wrest debt out of poor benighted borrowers, hence the tendency to give that onerous job to a debt collection agency.

Maybe the glut of short term loans lenders use their own bunch of heavies to get their money back or maybe the amount of debt owed to them just isn’t that much compared to that owed to the main lenders?

The government has certainly emerged as a new customer for the debt agencies and HMRC as well as the Department of Work and Pensions are both pretty keen to focus on debts which they say are owed to them. Government agencies say they are owed between 9 and 10 billion pounds between them and want it back.

Sara de Tute, who is the president of the CSA says it is inevitable that the overall debt burden is growing, because of the obvious economic downturn, but says that the figures have been inflated somewhat by the attempts by the government to combat what it says is fraud.

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