We pick up where we left off yesterday with Payday financiers next on MP hit-list, asking why MPs are now allegedly looking into lobbying payday lenders financiers to pull the plug on one of the biggest growth sectors in the UK economy.
A recent report highlighted that 7% of people who took part in the debt snapshot survey carried out by the R3 plan to take out short term loans in the near future. As the survey was a representative 2,005 people, the actual size of the market in the next six months has been predicted to be 3.5M customers, who may then go on to incur ‘roll-over’ debts or return for further finance if they find the loan service suits their needs. Another report carried out by the CFA, payday lenders’ monitoring body, suggests that over 90% of people who have taken out short term loans agree that they were happy with the service they received.
This begs the question: why are MPs channeling their energies thus, when such a large portion of the respective market place are happy with the product? Especially as the Mirror article suggests 86% of people who use short term loans put bread and water on the table with it. Is Ms Creasy trying to take food of the UK’s table? Her opposite numbers in power seem to be doing a good enough job of that on their own, as the size of the instant cash loan market suggests.
For Ms Creasy, trying to make the financiers who ‘bankroll’ the cash advance lenders withdraw their capital from such a proven way of making fast, legal money with such an eager, primed market place (in the main, payday borrowers forego the unpleasantry of invasive credit checks, as do those with £3M pounds worth of assets, creditworthy or not) is going to take some persuading. Yeah, good luck with that, Stella.
And the Mirror article also suggested that Stella Creasy, once satisfied she’s done all she can with the financiers, will look to see if any of the UK’s ailing pension funds are in anyway connected to some of the firms who bankroll the instant cash loan sector.
I put it to you now, given the evidence of the current £2bn payday market in the UK, which is forecast to only grow as austerity measures cut deeper into the household budgets of those who are least well off – which seems to be the average working-class family, whoever takes the reigns at No 10 – if you had a pension fund that has seen decrease upon decrease in recent years, would you mind if your fund managers gave it a couple of years in the instant cash loan sector to try and redress its ever-decreasing balance?
With nearly every other market in world economy under one threat or another, I can think of no safer place over the next couple of years than being looked after by the payday lenders’ banking group, can you?