H&T Group (HAT), one of Britain’s biggest pawnbrokers has suspended its unsecured cash loans business and warned that it may have to pay compensation to customers as the City regulator reviews its operations. H&T, which operates 254 pawnshops across the UK, said it is “working closely with the Financial Conduct Authority following a regulatory review of certain aspects and files of its high-cost short-term credit (‘HCSTC’) unsecured loans business … The group has ceased all HCSTC unsecured lending, at least temporarily, as it works through this review process.” H&T’s various business arms charge interest on an annualised basis of between 49.9% and 1,288%, and the announcement gives a rare insight into the scale of interest paid on what appear to be relatively small amounts lent. The company said the review would cover six years of lending by H&T in the HCSTC market. It said the value of its loan portfolio over the period averaged £3m, but customer interest payments were £24m.
Human rights campaigners have criticised the London Stock Exchange Group (LSE) for including G4S (GFS) on ethical investment indices, after the British security company was accused of contributing to human rights violations. The FTSE4Good index, run by the London Stock Exchange Group’s FTSE Russell subsidiary, has included G4S for the past three years. During that time, G4S, one of the world’s largest public sector employers, with 546,000 employees in 90 countries, has been at the centre of multiple controversies over its treatment of workers. In September, it said it will end its involvement in the immigration and asylum sector following a scandal at a detention centre near Gatwick. Norway’s $1.1tn (£850bn) government pension fund last week announced it had excluded shares in G4S from its investment portfolio, after its ethics watchdog found an “unacceptable risk of the company contributing to systematic human rights violations” among workers in the Middle East.
