Motor Finance Lawyers Back Advertising Ban Proposal as Duplicate Claims Chaos Engulfs FCA Redress Scheme

A proposal to impose a temporary ban on advertising motor finance claims has gained traction among leading claimant solicitors, following a session at last week's Claims Futures conference. Darren Smith, managing director of Courmacs Legal, which reports 1.6 million clients and 4 million claims, floated the idea and argued that the first law firm or claims management company to sign up a client in a compliant manner should be entitled to retain that client, with later-signing firms barred from poaching them through advertising. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has estimated that over a million complaints now have multiple representatives, a situation created by the long delay in the FCA establishing its motor finance redress scheme and by advertising that misleadingly suggested compensation could be obtained quickly. Kevin Durkin of HD Law, the solicitor who brought the original successful Supreme Court claim on motor finance commissions, said he agreed with the ban in principle but questioned whether it was achievable in practice, describing the current situation as a "complete mess". He criticised the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) for treating the problem as one for firms to resolve themselves rather than intervening. Kavon Hussain of Consumer Rights Solicitors supported the ban, pointing to the repeated remarketing of the same clients by multiple firms. Speakers at the conference agreed that lenders' delays in providing commission data had further fuelled the problem. Durkin and Hussain both predicted the Supreme Court would refuse to hear any further appeal against the June Court of Appeal ruling that permitted more than 5,000 claimants to use multi-claimant omnibus forms.