We took over regulation of consumer credit from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) on 1 April 2014.
We recently sent a letter titled ‘Your Consumer Credit Licence Has Now Expired’ to firms that had an OFT consumer credit licence but did not register for interim permission[1] by 31 March 2014 or inform us of plans to stop consumer credit activities[2].
If you have received this letter you should check the OFT licence number that the letter refers to, as we are receiving a high volume of calls from firms that had multiple OFT consumer credit licences but decided not to register all for interim permission.
If you held an OFT licence and did not register for interim permission, you cannot legally continue carrying out consumer credit activities and will have to apply for authorisation[3].
If you held an OFT licence but exited the market by 1 April 2014 you should tell us you have stopped consumer credit activities[2].
You can find out more about consumer credit[4] and what the change in regulation means for firms.