Did you have a Bentley car finance agreement before January 28th 2021? If so, you may be able to claim compensation in light of a new FCA announcement concerning hidden commissions.
Claim NowA British brand with iconic status and style, Bentley Motors was founded by W.O. Bentley and the first model came from New Street Mews back in 1919.
Some of the brand’s notable statistics and accolades over the last few years as published by the Bentley media site include:
The Financial Conduct Authority announced this January that they will be investigating PCP and HP agreements to determine whether hidden commission payments were being made to brokers. The FCA’s investigation has the potential to allow millions of car finance customers to claim compensation from their lender/broker. The FCA will be seeking to determine whether or not discretionary commissions were made by brokers who were financially incentivised by brands to offer higher interest rates.
The Financial Conduct Authority’s decision to investigate has been the result of customer complaints concerning motor finance firms potentially unfairly rejecting mis-selling claims. Such complaints from customers are centred around the belief that their contract was more costly due to their dealer/broker earning a significant secret commission from their policy.
Since the issue of potential hidden comissions and subsequent compensation for car finance customers made headlines in January, many people are wondering whether or not they may have a PCP claim. It’s important to remember that the FCA’s investigation will only cover car finance sales that meet certain criteria. In keeping with the deadline that prohibited hidden commissions, complaints need to be made only for car finance agreements sold before the 28th of January 2021. In addition to preceding the deadline the car sale must have utilised a personal contract purchase or a hire purchase offering. Unlike a PCP agreement, a hire purchase agreement means the customer pays the value of the car in specific monthly instalments.
The FCA estimates that 95% of car finance deals used a commission model, and 40% with the crucial ‘discretionary commission arrangements’. If you had such an agreements it wasn’t made clear you stand a chance of being entitled to money back when the FCA finishes its investigation.
Although the FCA have temporarily paused the need for firms to reply to clients about their existing car finance complaints, there are a few things to consider when it comes to making a clean. Firstly, your complaint should be sent to the lender that provided the car finance, not the broker or dealership.
It’s currently too early to know whether claims will be dealt with en masse or on an individual basis when the pause is lifted.
In the meantime, do check any agreement documentation you still have and collect and note as much information as possible about your car finance agreements.
We can help you get kickstart your complaint in order to see if you may be eligible for a payout, click here to get going.
It has been unveiled that lenders tend to conceal the existence of commission offered to their brokers. A mystery shopping exercise carried out back in 2018 reviewed the processes followed by 122 retailers in their provision of Motor Finance. Of those 122 retailers, only 11 chose to disclose to the customer that commission may be received by the broker for arranging the finance. This violates CONC requirements as it creates an unfair relationship between customer and lender.
It has been found that lenders often incentivise a broker to charge a higher interest by compensating them with a commission proportional to the interest they sell. The estimated cost of this behaviour for the customers is £300m annually. An FCA consultation entitled : ‘Motor Finance discretionary commission models and consumer credit commission disclosure,’ found that differences in charge models are the most damaging to the customer which unnervingly consist of 95% of the 1000 agreements the FCA previously looked into.
The mystery shopper exercise mentioned earlier which was carried out by the FCA also wanted to investigate whether or not lenders fully disclosed all the necessary information regarding the Motor Finance agreements to be made. The shoppers found that the concept of ownership of a car under PCP was frequently brushed over or poorly explained. 69% of the mystery shoppers were not made aware by the broker that they would not fully own the vehicle until they had payed the final ‘balloon payment.’
Not even the FCA currently knows the amount of financial compensation that may be available to car finance customers in the future. It’s worth noting that the FCA may determine that all the interest should be repaid, or perhaps only a fixed percentage above a fair amount. Be wary of firms promising to offer potentially thousands of pounds worth of compensation in redress, this is speculation.
If you'd like to get your compensation claim in before the FCA investigation is concluded to have it lodged in advance you can do so now
