London House News

As you read this we are in the process of training another new Franchise Owner.

Julia Bradbury has joined us and will be our Franchise Owner for the Leeds area. Julia is a qualified Accountant with a background of senior managerial experience. Welcome Julia. In addition, further training programmes are now booked for later in the year, and more details about these next month.

Our latest edition of The Score is now out and you can access an on-line copy by clicking on the link in the left hand column. We hope you enjoy it. If you would also like to receive a hardcopy, please let us know.

Finally, we attended this month the Annual CSA Conference in Birmingham. As ever, an excellent conference with good speakers, informative workshops and great networking opportunities.

You asked us

"The latest UK Debt figures have been released this month. They don't make for pleasant reading. Any thoughts?"

The figures do indeed give reason for concern with a number of startling statistics. There is obviously nothing we at London House can do to influence them, but the information can help when it comes to considering the way ahead. The industry can use them when lobbying or for just raising awareness. I am a firm believer that personal finance should be taught at school, in depth, and the younger generations made aware of the consequences of poor financial control. Alas, the current parlous financial state of many individuals means that there will always be plenty of work for London House and its clients.

If you have not seen the figures, here are some highlights:

Total UK personal debt at the end of July 2011 stood at £1,451bn. Individuals currently owe nearly as much as the entire country produced between Q2 2010 and Q1 2011.

UK banks and building societies wrote off £8.0bn of loans to individuals in the 4 quarters to end Q2 2011. In Q2 2011 they wrote off £2.06bn (£1.15bn of that was credit card debt). This amounts to a write-off of £22.54m a day.

Average household debt in the UK is ~ £8,055 (excluding mortgages). This figure increases to £15,491 if the average is based on the number of households who actually have some form of unsecured loan.

Average household debt in the UK is ~ £55,814 (including mortgages).

Today in the UK

• 334 people every day of the year will be declared insolvent or bankrupt. This is equivalent to 1 person every 59 seconds during a working day.  
• 1,391 Consumer County Court Judgments (CCJs) were issued every day during Q2 2011 and the average judgment amount was £3,345.
• Citizen Advice Bureaux dealt with 9,072 new debt problems every working day in England and Wales during the year ending March 2011.
• The average cost of raising a child from birth to the age of 21 is £27.50 a day.
• 99 properties were repossessed every day during Q2 2011.
• 112 new people became unemployed for more than 12 months every day during the 12 months to end June 2011.
• 1,688 people reported they had become redundant every day during 3 months to end June 2011

197 mortgage possession claims will be issued and 154 mortgage possession orders will be made today.

Focus On.....Vehicle Recovery

We are often asked if we can help with recovery of a vehicle following the finance plan falling into arrears. Historically this has always been a service offered by London House and, although we no longer undertake the "routine" recovery of cars, we are happy to help our clients with the more complex or demanding of cases. This may involve for instance, larger vehicles or one off cases where some investigation or surveillance is also required to locate the subject and the vehicle.

We are always happy to chat through individual cases with our clients and advise where necessary on the proposed way forward.

A Weekend in Belgium

A banking client phoned and asked if we could help with the recovery of some bank property. They had lent money under a finance arrangement for the purchase to a gentleman who had then defaulted on the repayments. The bank ascertained that the debtor had then given the asset, a Winnebago, to his son who was a Motocross Rider and he had taken the vehicle out of the country. Therefore, there were two breaches of their arrangement and they wanted the vehicle back.  The bank found that the son was likely to be competing in an event in Belgium that weekend and could we help?

We telephoned the event organisors and they confirmed that the subject was riding that weekend, so we set about our plans. Two of our Franchise Owners packed their bags and went to Belgium. Their first task was to find the vehicle when they got to the venue. Unsurprisingly, there were 300+ Winnebagos at the venue and they could not identify the bank's asset. It transpired that both the decal and the plates had been changed. Therefore, they watched the racing and waited for the subject to finish his race and return to the vehicle. He wheeled his bikes into the back of it and then went inside. When we knew we had got our man, we knocked on the door and advised him why we were there and that we wanted the keys. 

At this point his father, the actual debtor, appeared and wanted to know what was happening. After much discussion the father disappeared for a few moments and then returned with an offer of cash to bring the account up to date. Although a Sunday, our banking client was available on the phone and, after discussing the proposition with them, they agreed to take the money on offer to bring the account up to date.

September 2011

Now that the holiday season is over the phone calls and post to London House are back to their normal high levels following the usual August dip. A number of people have commented this year on how quiet August seemed to be. 

These are interesting times for the industry with a number of debtors making the most of the continued low Base Rate to make inroads into their debts. Indeed, a study on behalf of solicitors, Irwin Mitchell, of data from 12,500 households in mortgage arrears showed that more than half of those borrowers, who had received a home visit about their default, paid off some or all of their arrears during the second quarter of 2011.

The study also showed that the amount of these borrowers paying off their arrears had increased 7% compared to the same quarter in 2010. It had also shot up by 43% compared to two years ago.