Complaints about car finance commission

We see a range of complaints about car finance agreements, covering things like the sale of the finance, the affordability of the loan, or charges applied. Our page on complaints about car finance covers the range of complaints we see.

This page focuses on how you can make a complaint if you are unhappy about commission paid by the lender to the broker when setting up your car finance agreement.

We see complaints about car finance commission that’s paid by lenders to brokers on a range of car finance agreements.

Customers contact us because they believe:

• the way their car finance agreement was arranged was unfair, or
• the commission wasn’t properly disclosed and had an impact on how much interest they paid or the type of loan they received

They haven’t been able to resolve the complaint with the financial business, and so they come to us to investigate what’s happened.

When they contact us, people tell us that:

• they weren’t told the credit broker or intermediary – usually a car dealership – would receive commission from the lender for arranging the finance
• they think the commission model used by the lender was unfair
• the advice the credit broker gave them wasn’t impartial because of the commission arrangements between the broker and the lender
• the credit broker didn’t give the consumer the best interest rate available

Talk to your credit broker or lender and tell them you are unhappy and want to complain, so that they have the chance to look at what happened and put things right. They should reply with their final response within eight weeks. If you’re unhappy with their response – or if they don’t respond at all within that time – let us know. 

Our service is free and easy to use. You don’t need to pay anyone to represent you, for example a lawyer or claims management company (CMC). But if you want to, you can ask a member of your family, a friend or someone else to help you with your complaint.

When you contact us with your complaint, we’ll check your complaint is something we can deal with and, if it is, we’ll investigate.

Find out more about how to complain.

The complaints we receive about car finance commission cover a variety of agreements and commission structures. They’re about lenders, credit brokers – who is often also the car dealership  – and other credit intermediaries. We look at all the information and evidence, before we reach an outcome in each complaint.

To help us consider a complaint fairly, we’ll ask you to provide some information, tell us what you’re unhappy about and why you think you’ve lost out. We’ll make our decision about what happened using evidence provided by you, the financial business and any relevant third parties.

It’s helpful if you give us all the evidence you have from the time you got the car and took out the car finance. It is helpful if you can provide things like:

• the credit agreement itself - this is sometimes called a Hire Purchase (HP) agreement or personal contract purchase (PCP) agreement
• Initial Disclosure Document (IDD)
• any pre-contract information
• adequate explanation documents
• standard European consumer credit information

But send us any of the information or paperwork you have from the time. Don’t worry if you no longer have some of these things – we can still likely look at your complaint.

To reach a decision, we consider: 

• the relevant law
• any regulations that applied at the time
• any industry codes of conduct in force at the time

We’ll think about whether the financial business did everything it was required to do, and if it didn’t, whether you’ve lost out as a result.

If we decide you’ve been treated unfairly by the financial business, or that the business has made a mistake, we’ll ask them to put things right.

The exact details of how we’ll ask the business to put things right will depend on the nature of the complaint, and how you lost out. Our general approach is that you should be put back in the position you would have been in if the problem hadn’t happened.