Doorstep Loans Unaffordable Lending Claims
Doorstep lending — also called home credit, home-collected credit, or HCC — is a long-standing form of small, high-cost unsecured borrowing where a representative visits the borrower’s home to deliver the cash and collect repayments. APRs typically run from 200% to over 1,000%, with loan amounts of £100 to £1,500 over terms of a few months to a year. The sector has been heavily affected by unaffordable lending complaints, and most of the largest historic doorstep lenders have either collapsed or run off through schemes of arrangement.
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Why doorstep lending complaints succeed
The Financial Ombudsman upheld around 67% of complaints against the largest doorstep lender, Morses Club, in the period before its administration. The pattern across the sector has been similar. Several characteristics of doorstep lending make affordability complaints particularly common:
- Repeat lending was the business model — the high cost of home collection meant lenders relied on customers taking out a series of loans, often with each new loan partly used to clear the previous one.
- Customers were typically already in difficulty — many doorstep customers turned to home credit because they couldn’t access mainstream credit, often because of low or irregular income.
- Cash collections obscured strain — weekly cash visits did not give lenders the same visibility as direct debits or bank-account-based monitoring would have done. Customers were often simply paying out of cash from elsewhere.
- Cyclical lending was rarely scrutinised — many customers took 5, 10 or more loans in succession from the same lender, with successive affordability assessments rubber-stamping the pattern.
Under CONC 5.2A.20G, the lender should have been considering the frequency and nature of prior credit relationships. Repeat doorstep borrowing is the textbook example of what those rules are designed to catch.
The major collapses
The two largest historic doorstep lenders are no longer active:
- Provident — Provident Personal Credit operated home-collected loans for over 140 years. Closed its doorstep lending operation in 2021. A Scheme of Arrangement was approved by the Court in 2021 to deal with affordability claims, with a claim window that closed in 2021/2022. Customers received around 4-5p in the £.
- Morses Club — UK’s largest home-collected credit lender after Provident’s exit. Scheme of Arrangement was attempted in 2023 (claim window closed November 2023), but the scheme failed and the company entered administration on 17 November 2023. The administration’s Early Termination Fund means most customers will receive less than 0.5p in the £.
- Shelby Finance / Dot Dot Loans — Morses Club’s digital subsidiary, in administration alongside Morses Club.
What if the lender has gone into administration?.
Active doorstep lenders
A small number of doorstep lenders continue to operate. These remain FCA-authorised and complaints follow the standard CONC route — complaint to the lender, eight-week response window, escalation to FOS if needed.
- Loans at Home (Morses) — branding used by parts of the post-Morses doorstep market.
- Morses Club — historical record and current administration position.
- Greenwood Personal Credit — Greenwood Personal Credit, within the wider Provident group during the active period.
- Mutual Clothing & Supply — Mutual Clothing and Supply, a smaller home-collected credit lender that has continued to operate.
Doorstep complaint patterns
The Financial Ombudsman has consistently upheld doorstep complaints where:
- Multiple loans were taken in quick succession from the same lender.
- New loans were used to clear or pay down previous loans.
- The borrower was on benefits, low income, or otherwise financially fragile, and the lender did not factor this into the assessment.
- There were obvious signs of repayment strain — late payments, missed visits, requests for forbearance — that the lender did not respond to.
- The borrower was vulnerable for any reason (mental health, bereavement, disability) and the lender knew or should have known.
How a claim works
For active lenders, the standard process applies and complaints can succeed at FOS where they meet the affordability tests. For Provident and Morses Club, the position is much more constrained:
- Provident — the Scheme of Arrangement closed in 2021/2022; new claims are not generally accepted.
- Morses Club — the Scheme closed in November 2023; the administration’s Early Termination Fund pays out very small amounts to customers who had upheld claims under the failed Scheme.
- Loans sold to debt collectors (typically Lantern Debt Recovery Services) — affordability arguments can sometimes be raised in negotiation with the new owner of the debt, particularly where the administration applied a methodology to assess affordability before sale.
How a claim works step by step. For the dynamics where a lender has collapsed, see What if the lender has gone into administration?.
Related guides
- What is unaffordable lending?
- The CONC rules on affordability
- How the Financial Ombudsman handles unaffordable lending complaints
- What if the lender has gone into administration?
- Do I have an unaffordable lending claim?
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