Fighting Financial Mis-justice: Exposing the Culture of Debt

For too long, the culture of borrowing in the UK has relied on a narrative of silence and shame. If you are struggling to keep up with repayments—whether it’s a credit card, a loan, or a car finance deal—society often tells you it is a personal failure. You are told you “spent too much,” “didn’t budget,” or “lived beyond your means.”

At Allegiant, we know that in many cases, this simply isn’t true. And now, the data proves it. Below explains many systematic failures which expose financial mis-justice.

The Data Doesn’t Lie

The latest figures for the 2024/25 financial year show that consumer complaints have hit a six-year high. This isn’t a coincidence. It is a direct result of the systemic failures we fight against every day:

• Unaffordable Lending: Complaints about irresponsible lending have more than doubled in the last year, jumping from 33,000 to over 71,000.
• Car Finance Crisis: Hire Purchase (PCP/HP) is now the single most complained-about product in the UK.
• Credit Card Trap: Complaints about credit cards have reached their highest quarterly level on record.

We don’t see thousands of individual “mistakes” by consumers. We see a culture of unaffordable lending. We see systems designed to prioritise profit over people, algorithms built to ignore warning signs, and a lending environment that thrives on keeping you trapped in payments.

When you make a claim with us, you are adding your voice to a chorus of thousands telling the industry: “This culture must change.”

Here are the three systemic patterns that are driving these record-breaking numbers—and how we are fighting back.

The Culture of Automation: The “Day One” Failure

The Industry Standard:

In the modern lending culture, speed is everything. Lenders want to acquire you as a customer instantly. To do this, they have replaced human decision-making with automated scorecards.

• The Flaw: These systems often rely on statistical averages (guesses) about your living costs rather than checking your actual bank statements.
• The Result: If your credit file looks “clean”—meaning you haven’t defaulted yet—the computer says “Yes.” It ignores the reality that you might be using one credit card to pay off another, or that your overdraft is permanently in the red.

“Mr M’s income was lower than the spending they first estimated using ONS [Office for National Statistics] data… Everything I’ve seen suggests that Mr M’s essential spending was higher than his regular income and he was covering this deficit, and his discretionary spending, using savings and other ad hoc income” Decision Reference DRN-5757004

The Reality We Fight:

The surge in complaints this year is being driven by exactly this issue. We argue that a lender has a moral and regulatory duty to check affordability, not just creditworthiness. A “Day One Failure” occurs when a lender gives you money without verifying that you have the disposable income to pay it back. We fight to prove that lending blindly is not a service; it is negligence.

Financial Mis-justice Culture of the “Good Customer”: The Upsell Trap

The Industry Standard:

In the eyes of many UK lenders, a “good customer” isn’t someone who pays off their debt quickly. A “good customer” is someone who stays in debt, paying interest month after month, without defaulting.

• The Flaw: This culture rewards struggling borrowers with more debt. If you make minimum payments on your credit card, automated systems often trigger “limit increases”—pushing you from a £500 limit to a £5,000 limit without you even asking.
• The Result: You are patted on the back for “managing your account” well, when in reality, you are treading water.

“Based on the changes to Mr G’s credit balances, his ongoing use of cash advances, his reduced disposable income and his credit card utilisation now being over 90%, I considered it was irresponsible for 118 118 Money to have increased his credit limit…” Decision Reference DRN-4722583

The Reality We Fight:

With credit card complaints at an all-time high, we are challenging the myth of the “Good Customer.” We argue that increasing credit limits for someone who is already visibly struggling is irresponsible. Recent Ombudsman decisions have confirmed this: increasing a limit for someone in persistent debt isn’t helping them build credit; it is financial sabotage.

The Culture of Churn: The Dependency Cycle

The Industry Standard:

Across all sectors—from payday loans to car finance—the culture is built on “churn.”

• In Car Finance: The system wants you to reach the end of your PCP deal and be unable to pay the balloon payment, forcing you to “roll over” into a new car and a new debt.
• In Personal Loans: Lenders encourage “debt consolidation” or “refinancing” that solves a problem today but costs you thousands more over the next 10 years.

“So, the harmful pattern I think was established from loan 6 continued. Mrs F had paid large amounts of interest to, in effect, service a debt to Mutual over a very long time.” Decision Reference DRN-3023277

The Reality We Fight:

We call this Systemic Dependency. If a lender sees that you are stuck in a cycle of borrowing—taking out Loan B to pay off Loan A, or constantly renewing a line of credit—they have a duty to step in and stop the cycle. Instead, the current culture encourages them to keep the revolving door open. We fight to hold lenders accountable for the “tipping point” where they should have realised you were dependent on credit to survive.

Our Commitment to Changing the Culture

At Allegiant, we operate at scale because we want to protect consumers at every financial turn. We want to ensure no consumer is taken advantage of by a rigged system.

It is not your fault that this culture exists. But by standing with us, you are helping to stop it. Every successful claim is a message to the boardrooms of these companies and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) that we will stand for financial justice.

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