WEE THINKER

10,000 MORE COMPLAINTS IN A YEAR

Across

State as fact if farm has been vandalised (6) Instruments using lungs (6) Crudely chained to a Spanish ranch (8) State of posh limo now and again (4) Photographed goal-scoring attempt (4) Fast movers sound like tricksters (8) Depicts muddled stance (6) Fish for trout cooked black inside (6) The turn involves a stage performer (8) For every noise, a pet noise (4) Chooses to disrupt post (4) Intersecting lines on metal frame (8) Join up wrong lines besides a T (6) 22 Hungry journalist is

overly dull (6) 1 5 8 9 10 11 12 13 15 18 19 20 21

Down

2 Brief success of flambé cookery? (5,2,3,3) 3 4 5 6

I would myself twitch about love, which is daft (7) Alarms chaps leading with high cards (7) Speak through door at embassy (5) Spirit that’s good entertainer (5) 7 13 14 16 17

Never-ending sitcom covering vicinity (13) Gents in trouble going rigid (7) Travel round one point of rough current (7) Order us his raw fish dish (5) At home received gold bar (5)

COMPLAINTS about guarantor loans have rocketed by more than 3000 per cent in the space of a year.

The Financial Ombudsman Service had more than 10,300 complaints about such loans between October and December last year.

That compares with just around 300 for the same period in 2019.

Guarantor loans are offered to people on the condition someone else – often a friend or relative – will make the repayment if the borrower defaults.

The unsecured loans have overtaken payment protection insurance when it comes to complaints to the financial ombudsman.

Most are about what happened at the time the loan was provided. They include borrowers saying they should not have been given a loan, and people claiming they never agreed to be guarantors. And 81 per cent of cases between September and December last year were found in the complainant’s favour, the ombudsman said. Amigo, Britain’s biggest guarantor lender, has come under increasing regulatory scrutiny. It revealed in June that the Financial Conduct Authority was investigating the way it that it assessed credit worthiness. Adam Butler of debt charity StepChange said: “These loans can compound problems for those in financial difficulty.”