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Half a million Sunny loan customers may be due refunds

Paloma Kubiak
Written By:
Paloma Kubiak
Posted:
Updated:
05/11/2020

More than 500,000 customers of the payday lender which ceased trading this summer have been identified as potentially being owed redress over mis-sold loans.

KPMG, the administrator of Sunny’s parent company Elevate Credit International (ECIL), confirmed it will email half a million customers in the coming weeks inviting them to submit a creditor claim by 31 January 2021.

It comes after ECIL built a ‘claims calculator’ to identify and work out potential redress relating to complaints of unaffordable and mis-sold loans.

However, given the huge number of potential claims, customers may receive little or no refunds.

It stated: “As a result, if a very high volume of claims and queries is received, it is likely that the operating costs of responding to queries and processing and adjudicating claims will become so high that no funds will be available for a dividend to be paid to creditors.

“If a lower volume of claims and queries is received and a dividend can be made, the dividend is likely to be a very low percentage of your claim. Whilst the dividend will depend on the volume of claims and queries received, we estimate that any dividend payable could be less that 1p in the £ and that any payment would likely be made in Spring 2021.”

What customers need to know and do

Unsecured creditors, including customers with redress claims will receive emails in the coming weeks inviting them to submit a claim by 23:59 on 31 January 2021. Any claims after this deadline are unlikely to be accepted.

Customers will need to follow the instructions in the Sunny ‘My Account’ in order to check whether they have been identified as having a potential redress entitlement. The value of potential redress will also be available once customers have logged into their accounts.

If customers disagree with this amount, they can manually submit a claim for another amount for assessment by the joint administrators at KPMG.

For customers who are unable to access their Sunny account, contact the customer service centre on 0800 7315 444 to reset details.

For customers of ‘1 Month Loan’ or ‘Quid’ who wish to submit claims, they’ll need to submit a debt form and email it to claims@sunny.co.uk for the claim’s eligibility to be checked.

An important point to note is that if customers have already made a complaint to ECIL, including if it’s been resolved but not paid out, they’re required to submit a claim in the administration.

Credit file status

The administrators confirmed that for loans written off by ECIL, credit files are being updated to show loans as ‘settled’.

Further, where the ‘claims calculator’ has identified some or all of a customer’s loans as being unaffordable, irrespective of whether customers have submitted a complaint or claim against it, ECIL stated:

  • Where possible the customer’s first five unaffordable loans are being cleansed of any adverse reporting and all unaffordable loans after the first five are being deleted

or

  • where this approach has not been possible, all unaffordable loans are being deleted.

Reports are being amended now and customers’ credit files should be updated by 30 November 2020.

‘Shockingly large number’

Sara Williams, founder and author of the Debt Camel website, said: “Sunny had about 700,000 customers, so for 500,000 of them to have been mis-sold loans is a shockingly large number.

“The Sunny administrators have been fair and assessed all customers. So we know that half a million figure is right.

“You won’t be automatically paid a refund. When you have this email, you still have to submit a claim for your refund, but it will be easy.

“The emails are going out in batches, so don’t worry if you haven’t had one – but check your spam folder. You can still put in a claim even if you haven’t received the email.”

However, she warned that customers won’t get the full amount of the redress figure that has been calculated. As an example, a redress figure of £2,000 could mean they get just £20.

“The Administrators are warning that there is very little money to distribute – they call this “a dividend”. If too many people claim, there may be nothing.

“If it is decided that there aren’t enough funds to pay any dividend, the administrators will apply to the court for permission to donate the remaining money to a debt charity.

“Of course this news could put off so many people from claiming that hardly anyone does… in which case those that do may get a refund,” Williams added.