Oakbrook Finance Limited · DRN-6197670

The complaint Miss Y complains Oakbrook Finance Limited trading as Finio Loans irresponsibly lent to her. What happened Miss Y took out an unsecured loan from Finio Loans. This loan commenced on 30 March 2025 and was for £3,000; the monthly repayments were £155.54 and the total repayable was £5,599.44. This had an APR of 57.9% and a 36-month term. Miss Y says Finio Loans didn’t carry out the necessary and proportionate checks before lending to her. She says she was already experiencing financial difficulties, and was vulnerable due to excessive gambling. Miss Y believes that if Finio Loans had completed proper checks, they wouldn’t have approved the loan, so she feels the lending was irresponsible. Miss Y says the experience has impacted her wellbeing. She adds that the pressure and worry caused by the unaffordable repayments and damage to her credit file has led to stress and anxiety. She feels this would have been avoided if Finio Loans had assessed her situation properly. Miss Y wants Finio Loans to refund all the interest and charges she has paid, remove any negative markers from her credit file and pay her compensation. Finio Loans issued a final response letter on 8 September 2025. They said that before giving out the loan they carried out affordability checks to ensure that Miss Y could pay this back. They say their checks showed the loan to be affordable based on the information available to them. They don’t agree that they lent irresponsibly. Miss Y wasn’t satisfied with the response from Finio Loans and referred her complaint to this Service. Our Investigator didn’t uphold the complaint. They found the checks carried out were proportionate and a fair decision to lend was made. In response to this, Miss Y provided her bank statements – she said they demonstrate she was in financial distress and heavily reliant on credit, with persistent gambling transactions. The Investigator explained Finio Loans wouldn’t have been required to look at the statements prior to lending. Miss Y didn’t agree with this opinion. Because an agreement couldn’t be reached, the complaint has been passed to me to decide. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. Having done so, I’ve reached the same outcome as the Investigator, largely for the same reasons. I know this will disappoint Miss Y, so I’ll explain why.

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I’ve kept in mind the regulator’s rules and guidance on responsible lending (set out in its Consumer Credit Sourcebook – CONC) which lenders, such as Finio Loans, need to abide by. Finio Loans will be aware of these, and our approach to unaffordable/irresponsible lending complaints is set out on our website. I’ve used this approach to help me to decide Miss Y’s complaint. I won’t refer to the regulations in detail here, but will briefly summarise them. The rules and regulations in place at the time Finio Loans provided Miss Y with the loan required them to carry out a reasonable and proportionate assessment to make sure she could afford to repay what she owed in a sustainable way. This is sometimes referred to as an ‘affordability assessment’ or ‘affordability check’. Being able to sustainably repay credit means that they needed to consider whether she could make repayments without undue difficulty, while being able to meet any other commitments and without having to borrow further. There isn’t a ‘set list’ of checks that lenders must complete, but they must be proportionate to the specific circumstances of the lending. In general, what constitutes a proportionate affordability check will be dependent on a number of factors including – but not limited to – the particular circumstances of the consumer (e.g. their financial history, current situation and outlook, any indications of vulnerability or financial difficulty) and the amount/type/cost of credit they are seeking, in order to treat them fairly. The checks needed to be borrower focused —so Finio Loans had to think not just about the likelihood of them getting the funds back, or whether Miss Y met their lending criteria. They also had to consider if she could sustainably repay the lending being provided to her. I’ve kept all of this in mind when thinking about whether Finio Loans did what was needed, before lending to Miss Y. When Miss Y applied for the loan, Finio Loans used information Miss Y provided, together with information from a credit reference agency (CRA) to help them decide whether the loan was affordable. Miss Y declared she lived with her parents and earned around £25,000 per year. Finio Loans verified her income, confirming a net monthly income of about £1,793. Finio Loans completed a credit check to understand the credit commitments and repayment obligations that Miss Y had at that time. This showed she had debts of just over £13,000 with monthly repayments of around £518. There was no negative information recorded. There were no recent defaults or missed payments and she didn’t have any payday lending. There wasn’t any evidence of county court judgements (CCJs), Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs) or bankruptcy recorded. Based on the information available at the time, Finio Loans estimated Miss Y’s monthly expenses to be around £856. After factoring in the proposed loan repayment of £155.54, they calculated that she would have around £260 left each month in disposable income. Taking all this into account, I think the checks Finio Loans carried out were proportionate. I don’t think they acted unfairly when providing her with the loan. I say this because it was for a modest amount of £3,000 with relatively small monthly repayments of around £150. And nothing in the information Finio Loans obtained suggested Miss Y was experiencing financial difficulty. So I don’t think it was unfair for them to approve the loan based on what they knew at the time. I’ve also considered what Miss Y has said about her bank statements. The rules set out by the regulator only say that checks should take place and that these should be reasonable and proportionate. So Finio Loans didn’t make an error when they didn’t automatically ask to see Miss Y’s statements before approving the application. This is because the rules focus on whether the checks overall were enough, rather than requiring any specific documents.

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Finio Loans told us that, having reviewed Miss Y’s credit file at the point of application, they were satisfied she had enough disposable income to meet the repayments. Everything appeared to be well managed, and there was nothing in the information they gathered that suggested they needed to ask for anything further. I’ve also carefully considered what Miss Y said about her vulnerability as a result of gambling and the effect this matter has had on her mental health, and I’m sorry to hear about this. I appreciate that being in debt can make things more difficult. But I can’t see that Finio Loans were made aware of her gambling until Miss Y told them in June 2025. While I’m sympathetic to the impact of these circumstances, there’s nothing in the evidence I’ve seen that would’ve alerted Finio Loans to this at the time of lending. So I wouldn’t have expected them to take any additional steps. In reaching my conclusions, I’ve also considered whether the lending relationship between Finio Loans and Miss Y might have been unfair to Miss Y under s140A of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 (“CCA”). However, for the reasons I’ve already explained, I’m satisfied that Finio Loans did not lend irresponsibly when providing Miss Y with the loan. And I haven’t seen anything to suggest that s140A CCA would, given the facts of this complaint, lead to a different outcome here. So, while it’ll likely come as a disappointment to Miss Y, I won’t be upholding her complaint against Finio Loans for the reasons explained above. Finio Loans have said that Miss Y has a payment arrangement with them and I would remind them of their ongoing obligation to treat Miss Y fairly, and with forbearance. My final decision I am not upholding Miss Y’s complaint against Finio Loans. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Miss Y to accept or reject my decision before 24 April 2026. Alison Wharton Ombudsman

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