QuickQuid license under review by Financial Conduct Authority

The nation’s main regulatory watchdog FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) is assessing the operations of QuickQuid. The lender only has a virtual mailing address in North London, and its main office in the city is being run by Prime Secretarial Services. There is also no confirmation from the company as to how many employees they have. All of these are practices are not common and are causing the FCA to take a closer look at how they are operating.

QuickQuid currently has around one million customers, and they are one of the biggest payday lenders. The company was also forced to change their fee structure last year per the new regulations in the country, yet they still have a gross profit margin of 90 per cent.

A skilled persons review has been started by the financial watchdog. This means that all of their practices will be put under scrutiny. The firm, which is owned by Enova International and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the past, currently only has a temporary license to operate in the UK. The review being done by the FCA will lead the the financial watchdog in making a decision whether they should continue to operate or not.

Currently QuickQuid only has a temporary license to operate. The assessment being done is a skilled persons review and an external company will be doing this for the FCA. This will be completed before they are given a new license to lender to consumers.

FCA concerns of QuickQuid

One of the main concerns of the Financial Conduct Authority is that they do not have enough staff to operate in the UK. This includes both management and customer service people. The FCA requires that payday lenders and all other creditors, including QuickQuid, have staff based in the UK for their business operations. They can’t just rely on employees in the US or other countries.

Last year, in April 2014, the FCA demanded that QuickQuid, which was then opened by Cash America, open an office in the UK. All consumer and payday lenders need to be registered as a UK firm, have staff in place that are capable of being effectively supervised and they also need to have management in the country. All of this, and much more such as on fees and APR rates, need to be followed before they can win the ability for authorisation.

The major question now is whether this was done or not. Since they only have a virtual mailing address from a rented PO Box and temporary offices, the question is whether they followed the edicts put into place last year. All of this will be assessed as part of the review.

There has been no comment from QuickQuid on the number of staff based in the UK. The only thing they have said is that the employees in the London office manage people that are based in both the US and UK. But since there were no official details provided by the lender on how many people that is, this is a concern of the FCA.

Like all paypay lenders, QuickQuid was forced to set daily limits on their loans of 0.8% a day. They were also told to have staff in the UK who could meet with regulators when needed. All of these new rules needed to be followed before a new license was issued. Now the question is whether the firm did this or not. Stay tuned for the results of this review.