呼吁严格规范"合法高利贷"

According to a new poll by the think tank Compass, 68% people believe the government should be introducing a lending rate cap on things such as credit cards, store cards and even the, what they call, payday loans. Seven in ten want the government to provide alternative sources of affordable credit via post banks or credit unions and community development finance initiatives, no less. Currently, 1.2 million people owing ￡1.2 billion in those payday loans alone. Joins us now, Gavin Hayes, General Secretary of the Compass, behind this research. Good morning, thanks for coming.

First of all, what is the payday loan, and why this is so damaging?

Well, this is a short-term loan, usually over short-term periods. But some short-term lenders are charging an excessive 2.5 thousand percent on APRs for these loans, and often this puts people in this pile of debts that they can't get out of and causes huge problems for people. I mean this used to be called loan-sharking, and this is one of the charges that’s being made on even credit cards that it's legalized loan-sharking.

Yeah, and that's right. And the government has in fact committed to taking action on storing credit cards, however what it hasn't yet committed to do,  is taking action on the unsecured credit market, that you know,  the payday loans. And obviously when we've got these excessive rates of an excessive 2.5 thousand percent, we believe that the right policy would be a lending rate cap, to cover all consumer prices.

Is it the difficulty though when you get a non-secured loan that you could, you know, understand why a lender may want that, ah, if you like, extra safety net to assume that people are not going to keep this loan outstanding that you have to pay it off quickly to avoid such charges.

Sure, but, I mean, the problem is that a lot of these lenders are charging excessive rates. Sure, you know, they might need to charge a little bit more because it's a short-term loan.

Or perhaps not explaining, I mean that is the other issue, you know, people don't realize that they are going to get to these rates.

Well, I mean, it is often clear what the rates are but then the problem is that they often, the default setting on a lot of these loans, as they renew from month to month to month, and may not obviously if you are paying an interest rate in an excessive rate of 2.5 thousand percent. That soon, you know, adds up ...

But, is it also the case that when you go to most of the people and say APR, they just don’t know what we are talking about, you know, you actually try to work out what the rate of interest will be over a certain period , most people have real difficulty trying to understand that.

Yeah, I think there are problems around, I mean the transparency, in terms of a lot of lending, and what it actually means is that some lenders are actually charging up to ￡82 for every ￡100 borrowed. And obviously this is causing huge difficulties for people .

When the base rate is 0.5%.

Half a percent.

Extraordinary, isn't?