H&T to repay 8,000 customers wrongly granted loans
Pawnbroker H&T has said it will refund customers more than £2m after an investigation found loans were granted which should not have been.
The company said a review into high-cost short term loans issued to customers between April 2014 and October 2019 and found that 9,800, more than one in ten, should never have been made. H&T will now offer £2.1m in compensation to 8,000 customers who received 11.5 per cent of loans made by the company during the period.
“The Board of H&T is very aware of the concerns and uncertainly that this review has caused for all stakeholders,” commented Chris Gillespie, the chief executive of H&T.
“Customers whose loan should not have been granted and who are due redress, will be contacted directly and we will endeavour to complete the redress programme as quickly as we can, so as not to prolong the uncertainty further,” he said.
The company said it has been working closely with the UK’s financial watchdog, the FCA, to investigate the loans since 2019.
H&T will repay a total of £2.1m, of which £1.6m will be paid directly to customers and £0.5m will be used to lower outstanding loans. Each customer will receive an average payment of £264 the company said.
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