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PART 3
Vanquis Bank is represented by Edward Levey KC of Fountain Court Chambers, instructed by Herbert Smith Freehills LLP.
TMS Legal is represented by Kingsley Napley LLP. Full counsel information was unavailable on Tuesday.
The case is Vanquis Banking Group PLC v. TMS Legal Ltd., case number KB-2024-000744, in the High Court of Justice of England and Wales.
PART 2
More than 1,000 claims from TMS were withdrawn after they were submitted, Vanquis alleges. Only 8.8% of the more than 10,000 claims that Vanquis has considered so far were partially or fully upheld, and the rest were rejected.
TMS operates on a "no win, no fee" basis, but charges a commission of 45% of the total compensation received if a claim is successful, Vanquis said. This is why the claim manager submitted complaints "without any proper regard" for their merit or lack of merit, the bank added.
A questionnaire was provided by TMS to its clients before bringing a claim, the lender alleged. But it did not provide the claim manager with a proper basis for making an allegation of irresponsible lending, because it only asked minimal and basic information on their financial position, Vanquis says.
TMS did not make any reasonable inquiries to find out the nature of Vanquis' affordability checks and whether these were "fair, reasonable and proportionate," the bank said. TMS knew, or ought to have known, that the questionnaire did not provide enough information to make an allegation, it added
Complaints submitted to the FOS are time-barred from six years after the event, under the sourcebook on dispute resolution of the Financial Conduct Authority or three years from the date the complainant became aware they had cause to claim, according to the filing.
TMS provided its customers with a "limitation confirmation" to state the complainant had "only recently understood" they had cause to complain. Vanquis alleged this did not mean complaints were necessarily brought in time and that TMS needed to carry out further enquiries to determine they were.
Vanquis declined to comment on Tuesday. TMS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
PART 1
Law360, London (April 30, 2024, 4:13 PM BST) -- Vanquis Bank Ltd. is seeking an estimated £4.5 million ($5.6 million) from a law firm it says has sent it thousands of meritless complaints, accusing it of irresponsible lending in a "reckless and indiscriminate" approach to earn commission if a claim happens to succeed.
The lender alleged in a High Court claim on March 11, which has recently been made public, that it had been "deluged" by generic complaints submitted by claims manager TMS Legal Ltd. that it provided unaffordable credit to its cardholders. TMS Legal carries out business as "The Money Solicitor."
TMS sent almost 16,850 complaints to Vanquis on behalf of the lender's clients between October 2022 and the end of 2023, the claim said. Complaints are first sent to Vanquis itself, and clients can ask the Financial Ombudsman Service to look at the case afresh if they are not satisfied with the decision, according to the filing.
Vanquis alleges that TMS, which specializes in claims for financial products that have sold wrongly, failed to make "reasonable enquiries" to determine whether there was sufficient information to support the complaint or if it was properly arguable. This breached the duties TMS owed its clients and was intended to cause the bank loss, Vanquis claims.
The lender claimed that it has suffered "considerable loss" both in the "time and cost of investigating (unmeritorious and unparticularized) claims which should never have been brought" and fees owed to the ombudsman.
Am pretty new here and have been trying to discover a little more about the legal action Vanquis are pursuing against the CMC. Apologies to LTH if what follows is “old news”
The CMC is TMS Legal. They’ve already been sanctioned last year following a complaint by Vanq for posting misleading “testimonials” on TikTok featuring actors not customers, and by the SRA for other failings
https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/claimant-firms-tiktok-ads-ruled-to-be-misleading/5117899.article
https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/solicitor-check/645041/#:~:text=1.1%20TMS%20Legal%20Limited%20(',the%20investigation%20of%20%C2%A31%2C350.
On 11 March Vanquis launched a High Court claim against TMS Legal.
https://caseboard.io/cases/dad1ae6a-c513-48df-bece-9beb799635d0
I can’t access the Particulars of Claim - an article by Law 360 from 30/4 best describes it but you have to register to get it and it’s long, so I’ll post separately in different Parts.
Thanks!
Yes, I think we did. If we close above it again tomorrow (and better still, the day after too) then IMO that would be a confirmation. GLA.
LWHL - I think we have closed marginally above the 50dma. Could anyone confirm?
You know very well Pooks, they are the experts at hide and seek. We can seek as long as we like but they are so clever at hiding things. I wonder why they never disclosed the figure, probably too high to tell us. Just add this to other things they never told us.
Standanddeliver … what was never reported was the agents compensation ( EU LAW ) 2 years average earnings. Would be big money.
Yes Pooks you are correct, it was doomed anyway. The BOD knew this so why make the changes when they did, it was unnecessary, considering the company had operated this system for over 100 years. They could have close it down gradually still using self employed agents. The BOD crashed the company and share price for no reason. The government wanted to shut down all companies who used doorstep collection (cash). due to health and safety and money laundering issues. They used the FSA to do so and succeeded.
If we close above the 50 DMA, that would be very bullish, IMO. Pleasing SP action today so far.
Fingers crossed they build on this and we see significant appreciation from here. GLA.
Certainly is history but the business was doomed whether or not the sales force was self employed or not . In this highly regulated industry self employed agents must be a nightmare to control.
That's all history now. I think having H&T onboard is a positive step and will be very good for Vanquis.
The most sickening thing about all this is, the BOD kept silent and the catastrophic impact this was going to have on the share price, the poor investors who were oblivious to what was going on were going to take the hit.
He came back to PFG to help them out with no intention of staying and that was for a very good reason. The changes to the structure of the company, which he was so dead against, had done irreversible damage which could not be corrected. The company had changed to employed agents from self employed agents and that was the big mistake, it was never going to work, that's what put the company on its knees. Gillespie left PFG after he sorted out a lot of the problems but he knew PPC was doomed. PPC had 1.8m customers and today that is zero. He went from PFG to H&T where he became the CEO.
How did that work out for him?
ITK24. No it isn't. What on earth are you talking about, stuck in the 80s. Chris Gillespie was asked to come back to PFG and sort the mess out in 2017.
Chris… is that you?
Nobody else would hold such a high opinion of a ‘has been’ who is stuck in the 80s. Certainly not the man to advise on how to turn things around.
Well well well, who would have believed this, H&T partnership. The CEO of this company is my good old friend Chris Gillespie. So who is Chris Gillespie. The most experienced and successful guy in the UK for home credit. This is the guy who took the PFG share price from £6 to £35. This is the guy (ex CEO of Provident Personal Credit) who had to leave Provident because the CEO of PFG (Peter Crook) just didn't see eye to eye with him and wanted him out. Chris Gillespie resigned from PFG as he could see the company crashing as Crook wanted to make changes that would devastate PFG, he was proven right. The same guy the chairwoman had to get on her knees and beg him to come back and sort the mess out, which he did. Chris Gillespie is a born and bred Provident man and to me this means one thing, he is helping Vanquis with his advice, how to turn things around. This is best news to come from Vanquis in years. If they listen and learn from him the company will be onwards and upwards sooner rather than later.
The unfairness extends to any regulated business in the CMC cross hairs, whether it be banks, fintech, or IFA's.
Honestly, I support a system which allows genuine complaints. That's to be encouraged. What's broken is, as you say, the ability for CMC's to basically through mud, cheaply and without justification, in the knowledge some might stick. Its a percentage game.
But if nothing changes then ultimately we we will end up with an industry more mindful of complaints than serving customers, and an increase in the volume of backside covering disclosures and disclaimers that, in my experience, most customers don't want or read.
Yeah, my buy orders were at the lower end of that range, with one cheeky sub 50p order too, in case we got a sell off.
Certainly still possible in a wider market correction though. US data later, for example. GLA.
The current system works very well for CMC's to profit without much risks. Just use AI to automatically process and send any complaints and bombard the system in hope minicule % of complaints to go through to succeed and they get rewarded. This system just not fair on smaller banks and fintech when we just don't have the infrastructure of the larger banks. Silly really..
We're in a straight jacket though. Regulation requires that we address any complaint, defined as "any expression of dissatisfaction, whether justified or not", and so the bar for a CMC to make a complaint is really low and every one of those needs to go through our administrative mill.
Its great to see FOS proposing to charge CMC's with case fees going forwards, but it would be wonderful if the FCA would just introduce some dispensation that it allowed us to respond with a single letter to the CMC, in respect of all complaints, confirming we have no discretionary commission exposure at all.
Doesn't sound too difficult to me...
Quite a gloomy update re complaints. Basically saying it is in the hands of regulators.
Mobilising a team offshore shows it is not expected to be a short term problem however it does show agility from management. Looks like it is worth holding off future buys until the HY, unless you fancy a punt
Snoop is an impressive product and clearly came with a decent team of engineers
Could drift for a few days down to 50-54p if the reverse then we know Norges and Scrhoders will be buying up to 1 August half year results when first profit numbers released