Banks turn 80% more customers on to debt advice

It would seem that lending restrictions have become so tight that in the first month of this year, the number of customers turned away by banks and instead referred to debt advice groups soared by 81%.

With credit drying up and more and more Britons facing insolvency, the free debt solutions provider, Payplan, recorded a 14% leap in the number of consumers asking for financial help.

Payplan have put the increase down to banks identifying “at risk” customers and referring them on to independent debt advice companies.

The group has said that during each week of January 2009, staff took on an average of 2,134 new debt cases.

The managing director of Payplan, John Fairhurst has said: “It is heartening to see that increasingly creditors are helping their customers to deal with the whole of their debt problem, rather than just concentrating on the money owed to them.”
Article sourced from www.debtmanagementtoday.co.uk 11th February 2009