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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Business
Sam Barker

BrightHouse customers set to lose thousands on mis-sold loans after collapse

Thousands of customers of failed rent-to-own firm BrightHouse are unlikely to get any money back, administrators have warned.

BrightHouse offered loans for expensive items like white goods and sofas, which consumers then paid back with interest of up to 99.9% .

In 2017 BrightHouse was ordered to pay back £14.8million to customers after the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) found it had treated customers unfairly.

Administrators for BrightHouse, Grant Thornton, had earmarked £600,000 to handle 11,000 mis-selling claims, the Guardian reports .

But the future of that £600,000 pot is now in question - and any compensation for the outstanding 11,000 customers.

Were you mis-sold a BrightHouse loan? Let us know: mirror.money.saving@mirror.co.uk

A Grant Thornton report on BrightHouse said: "Given the likely significant volume and complexity of customers’ affordability claims … it is the administrators’ expectation that the cost associated with assessing these claims would far exceed the funds available for distribution."

BrightHouse went into administration in 2020.

Earlier that year it was paying out around £1million a month in claims, with executives believing the eventual toll could be far greater.

In 2019 it announced 30 store closures, a tenth of the company's shops.

Last month The Mirror reported that Provident customers who were mis-sold loans will receive refunds from July - but only for less than 10% of what they’re owed.

The doorstep lender confirmed that redress payments will be capped at just 4p to 6p per £1 owed for the fees and interest they were charged.

This applies to those who were mis-sold loans between April 2007 and December 17 2020 from Provident and its sub-brands Satsuma, Glo and Greenwood.

Provident Financial Group had around 4.2million customers during this period but is unclear how many will be due refunds, or what the average figure will be.

The loans company has capped the total refunds it will hand out at £50million under a system called a “scheme of arrangement”.

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