News

The VRS welcomes a report published last week by the Treasury Select Committee on their inquiry into consumers’ access to financial services. We were deeply encouraged to see that the Select Committee’s findings align so closely with the aims and motivations of the VRS, with the Select Committee concluding that financial services providers ‘should offer customers the opportunity to exclude themselves either from borrowing altogether or from spending excessive sums of money in short spaces of time’.

During the inquiry they had heard from consumer bodies, charities, financial service providers and statutory bodies. A key part of the report looked into the definition of vulnerability and the duty of care towards them.

Evidence from the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute demonstrated just how crucial a service such as the one the VRS provides is, describing how they have come across people having to put their credit cards in water in the freezer in order to prevent them from using it.

The report calls on UK Finance to work with financial services providers to find ways to increase the variety of self-exclusion spending and lending blocks available to consumers. The VRS will continue to engage with UK Finance, organisations and regulators to support the achievement of this aim.

The report can be read in full here