View from Whitehall - March 2022

31 March 2022

It was a joy to see so many FLA members present this week at the parliamentary reception we jointly hosted with the All Party Parliamentary Group on Alternative Lending to highlight the broad range of customers and markets our member finance. At a time when budgets remain tight for many households, member firms demonstrated to our stakeholder community their value in enabling key workers to make affordable repayments towards a car to get them to work and to the general public to invest in cleaner energy sources in the home.

FLA business finance members brought along clients who support the transition towards net zero, for example, a bed and mattress manufacturer whose production processes have been carbon neutral since 2019. Other business customers were in place to explain how they had pivoted their business to adapt to the pandemic.

The FLA has published a number of case studies to coincide with the event. Introducing the publication, FLA Chair, Rebecca McNeil argued the case for Consumer Credit Act reform, the need for Government support to facilitate the rollout of finance to support the financing of green assets and stated that longer term the Government needed to consider enhanced support for the many independent lenders to avoid the disparity between what the banks received during Covid.

John Glen, the City Minister, heralded the role played by the industry to help distressed consumers and businesses navigate their finances and promised that the Government would undertake a review of the regulatory framework to facilitate innovation and evolving consumer behaviour. We look forward to working with officials to that end.

The feedback from members and stakeholders was that it was good to be back!

Published 31 Mar 2022