The City watchdog is clamping down on payday lenders, after complaints from borrowers more than trebled this year. Just two weeks ago, Money Mail raised concerns about the tactics lenders use to entice borrowers. Now, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has written to 150 payday-lending bosses, ordering them to compensate customers who were sold loans they couldn’t afford to pay back. The number of complaints about payday lenders jumped 251 per cent to 11,000 for the three months from April to June this year, compared to 3,126 in the same quarter of 2017, said the Financial Ombudsman Service.

According to the Ombudsman, last year, it found in favour of borrowers in nearly two-thirds of cases and most complaints were from customers who couldn’t afford repayments. This month, Money Mail revealed how firms were repeatedly lending more money even before borrowers had paid back their original loans. We flagged this to the City watchdog. An FCA spokesman says: ‘We welcome intelligence of firms failing to comply with our requirements.’

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