Loans 2 Go Limited · DRN-6233032

The complaint Loans 2 Go Limited provided Miss M with a £1,500 loan in December 2020. Miss M says the credit was provided irresponsibly. What happened The details of this complaint are well-known to both parties, so I won’t repeat them again here. The facts aren’t in dispute, so I’ll focus on giving the reasons for my decision. My provisional conclusions I issued a provisional decision not upholding this complaint. The details are set out below. We’ve set out our general approach to complaints about unaffordable or irresponsible lending on our website, and I’ve taken this into account in deciding Miss M’s case. I’ve decided the credit was provided fairly because: • I think the checks Loans 2 Go did before providing the credit were reasonable and proportionate given the credit it offered and what it knew about Miss M’s financial situation. • Loans 2 Go asked Miss M about her income and expenses. She declared a monthly income of £1,500. Pay slips were provided which showed Miss M’s monthly gross salary as £1,544, giving a net monthly income of around £1,290. • A credit check was undertaken which recorded no county court judgments, bankruptcies or individual voluntary arrangements. While there was a previous arrangement on one account, her recent data showed her accounts as up to date with no recent adverse information recorded. Miss M was utilising a high proportion of her revolving credit facilities, and one account was over its limit, but I do not think this was enough to say that this loan shouldn’t have been given. • Based on Miss M’s credit report she had total outstanding debts of £8,266, which I do not find suggested Miss M was overindebted. Miss M was paying £83 a month for a hire purchase agreement and including an amount towards her other unsecured debts and this Loans 2 Go loan would give total credit repayments of around £481 a month. • Deducting Miss M’s credit costs (including the repayments on this loan) from her income would leave around £809 for her living costs. Miss M’s said she lived with parents and so didn’t pay rent and this was reflected in her declared costs. • Based on the information Loans 2 Go gathered and what it knew about Miss M’s circumstances, there was nothing to suggest Miss M was likely to be unable to sustainably repay what she was being lent.

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• I don’t think Loans 2 Go acted unfairly in any other way. This means I don’t think Loans 2 Go did anything wrong when it provided the loan to Miss M. I’ve also considered whether the relationship might have been unfair under s.140A of the Consumer Credit Act 1974. However, for the reasons I’ve already given, I don’t think Loans 2 Go lent irresponsibly to Miss M or otherwise treated her unfairly. I haven’t seen anything to suggest that s.140A or anything else would, given the facts of this complaint, lead to a different outcome here. I know this isn’t the outcome Miss M hoped for. But for the reasons above, I’m not asking Loans 2 Go to do anything to put things right. Miss M didn’t accept my provisional decision. She said that her account statements showed she was persistently overdrawn at the time of her loan application and paying overdraft fees, and her payments to her creditors exceeded her income. She didn’t accept the figure I used for her credit payments and said her monthly payments averaged around £1,420. Miss M further noted that her account statements showed gambling transactions and she was making small transfers suggesting the need to meet shortfalls. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. I have looked again at Miss M’s complaint in light of her response to my provisional decision. Miss M has referred to her bank statements containing gambling transactions and frequent small transfers. However, I do not think in this case that Loans 2 Go was required to request copies of her statements. I note that Miss M has said her statements were provided ahead of the loan being issued, but Loans 2 Go has confirmed that these weren’t reviewed at that time and that it relied on Miss M’s payslips to verify her income. Miss M has noted her use of her overdraft, however, based on Loans 2 Go’s credit check, she was utilising £1,245 of her £1,700 overdraft at the time of her application which I do not think should have raised issues. I accept that persistent use of an overdraft can be a sign of financial difficulty, but I do not think, based on the information available to Loans 2 Go, that it should have identified this as a reason not to provide the loan. Miss M has said that she was paying an average of £1,420 to her creditors, not the lower figure I included in my provisional decision. Loans 2 Go carried out a credit check before the loan was issued and as I think the checks carried out were proportionate. I find it reasonable that Loans to Go would rely on the credit check results to identify Miss M’s monthly credit repayments. The credit check showed Miss M had unsecured debt of £8,266 and was making repayments towards a hire purchase of £83 a month and had around £5,281 of other debts including credit cards, mail order accounts and an overdraft. Deducting the hire purchase repayments, the repayments towards this loan and an amount to reflect repayments towards her revolving credit would not suggest that this loan was unaffordable for Miss M. So, for the reasons set out in my provisional decision and above, I find the checks carried out before the loan was provided were proportionate and as these suggested the loan to be affordable for Miss M I don t uphold this complaint.

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My final decision My final decision is that I do not uphold this complaint about Loans 2 Go Limited. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Miss M to accept or reject my decision before 16 April 2026. Jane Archer Ombudsman

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