Anyone who complained about a car finance agreement this year and has heard nothing since now has an explanation, and it is procedural rather than personal.
In a statement published on 2 July 2026, the Financial Conduct Authority said that parts of its motor finance consumer redress scheme are suspended while legal challenges to it proceed. While the suspension holds, firms are not required to calculate redress, to pay it, or to send communications about compensation owed.
Who is challenging it
The regulator named the parties in an earlier statement dated 1 May 2026: Consumer Voice, represented by Courmacs Legal, alongside Volkswagen Financial Services, Mercedes Benz Financial Services and Crédit Agricole Auto Finance. The FCA said it would defend the scheme robustly as lawful, and observed that none of the claims it had received were expressly in the name of individual consumers.
We are not going to characterise the grounds of the challenge: the statements we have read do not set them out, and this desk does not speculate about arguments it has not seen, nor about which way a tribunal will decide. The firms are named here because the regulator named them, and for no other reason.
Per the FCA’s statement, the hearing is listed for 14-18 December 2026 or 16-26 February 2027.
Suspended is not cancelled
That distinction is doing a great deal of work, and it is easily flattened in the retelling. A partial suspension pauses specified obligations pending an outcome. The scheme exists, the FCA intends to defend it, and the timetable has moved. On the regulator’s consumer page, if the scheme is upheld and not appealed, payments under it are expected to begin in 2027 — a forecast conditional on a hearing that has not yet happened, and one to hold loosely.
What a complainant should do
Very little, which is an unsatisfying answer and an accurate one.
The FCA’s car finance complaints page states that the best thing a consumer can do is complain to their lender, at no cost. A complaint already made does not lapse because the scheme is paused. The useful work meanwhile is documentary: find the agreement and read the pre-contract information, which, as we have argued of the personal loan, is the document that actually describes what was sold to you.
Loan Herald neither lends nor brokers credit, holds no authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority and is not regulated by it. We publish; nothing above is advice about your complaint or your agreement. A firm’s permissions are a question for the FCA Register rather than for us, and if the repayments themselves are becoming hard to meet, free non-commercial help is available from Citizens Advice, StepChange and MoneyHelper.