The Consumer Rights Act 2015 (“CRA”) is an important piece of recent legislation which governs many contracts between traders and consumers, and implements the. EU Unfair Contract Terms Directive (93/13/EC) (“UTD”.) “Consumer” is defined in section 2 (3) of the Act as: –
“an individual acting for purposes that are wholly or mainly outside that individual’s trade, business, craft or profession.”
There is as yet no direct authority on how the definition of consumer applies in the context of security documentation, but the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) has set out the test in the UTD for when it applies to personal Guarantees and security agreements given by an individual to secure debts of a company In Dumitru Tarcău, Ileana Tarcău v Banca Comercială Intesa Sanpaolo România SA (C-74/15) the court held that a personal Guarantee was to be subject to the UTD because it was given by a natural person, acting outside his trade or business, and who had no functional links to the guaranteed company.
The FCA has published new versions of the information sheets that consumer credit firms must use to accompany arrears and default notices. Firms are required to use the new versions from 27 July 2018.
The Joint Money Laundering Steering Group (JMLSG) has published a revised version of the Asset Finance sectors in Part II of its guidance on the prevention of money laundering and the financing of terrorism for the UK financial services industry.
“We are not looking for perfection. We do not have thousands of inspectors going out and checking people’s homework. What we do have are millions of people that have new rights and they can make a complaint against a company to our office”.
We recently prepared for trial a Funder’s defence to a claim which raised a number of difficult issues in relation to the annual statements required for a fixed sum credit agreement regulated by the Consumer Credit Act 1974 (“CCA”). In the event the matter settled before trial but a number of interesting points arose and are worth considering.
A recent VAT case in the European Court Justice is of considerable interest to motor-vehicle financiers because it blurs the long established distinction between the VAT treatment of lease and hire purchase.
A recent case in the High Court contains some interesting comments on the extent to which an obligation to provide equipment on hire of satisfactory quality and/or fit for purpose extends beyond the initial point of delivery.
We have in the past been critical of faults in the court system and the drive towards ever increasing fees, so it is only fair that we also give credit where credit is due.
The process of replacing the Insolvency Rules 1986 and 28 subsequent amendments has necessarily involved difficult balancing exercises between the interests of numerous stakeholders, but the general consensus among creditors is that The Insolvency (England and Wales) Rules 2016 (SI 2016/1024) (“IR 2016”) which came into force on 6 April 2017 are likely to significantly improve the insolvency process for most creditors.
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