A small rise against a much bigger fall
In the most recent 90-day window tracked by Veste, the uphold rate for irresponsible lending complaints decided by the Financial Ombudsman stood at 17.3%, up from 15.2% in the prior 90-day window. That is a rise of 2.1 percentage points. Over the same comparison, the number of published decisions fell from 1,593 to 960, a drop of 633 decisions, or 39.7%. Both windows meet Veste's minimum sample threshold of 30 decisions, so the comparison is not resting on a handful of cases. But the direction of travel in the underlying monthly figures suggests this uptick needs to be read carefully rather than taken as a reversal of trend.
The uphold rate here is calculated as (upheld decisions plus half of partially upheld decisions) divided by total decisions, which is Veste's standard measure across all Financial Ombudsman categories. It rewards partial outcomes proportionately rather than treating them as full wins for either side.
The numbers in context
Across the full irresponsible lending dataset, which runs from 2013-04-05 to 2026-07-07 and covers 30,770 decisions, 7,824 were fully upheld, 7,357 partially upheld and 15,589 not upheld, giving an overall uphold rate of 37.4%. That headline figure sits well above the corpus-wide baseline uphold rate across all Financial Ombudsman categories, which is 28.8% across 404,061 decisions with an outcome. Irresponsible lending complaints have historically been more likely to succeed, at least partially, than the average Financial Ombudsman case.
But the recent trajectory tells a different story to that long-run average. Annual figures show the uphold rate falling steadily: 45.5% in 2022 across 3,189 decisions, 32.7% in 2023 across 2,520 decisions, 31.2% in 2024 across 2,653 decisions, 20.8% in 2025 across 3,482 decisions, and 16.1% so far in 2026 across 2,627 decisions. Against that four-year decline, a 2.1 percentage point rise in the latest quarter looks like a pause or minor wobble rather than a change of direction. It would take several more quarters of similar or larger increases before this reading could be described as reversing the broader pattern.
What the monthly series shows
Veste's monthly series for irresponsible lending spans 25 months, from 2024-07-01 to 2026-07-01. It shows uphold rates falling from the low 30s in mid-to-late 2024 towards figures in the mid-teens for most of 2026. January 2025 recorded a rate of 20.5% on 161 decisions, but the rate climbed back into the 30s by February and March that year before beginning a more sustained slide. By June 2025 the rate had fallen to 18.0% on 280 decisions, and it drifted lower through the autumn and winter, reaching 14.1% in February 2026 on 532 decisions, the largest single-month volume in the series. March 2026 saw the highest monthly total, 659 decisions, with a rate of 16.5%. The most recent full month, June 2026, recorded a rate of 16.8% on 325 decisions, and the partial month of July 2026 shows a rate of 22.4% on just 38 decisions, a small sample that should not be read as a trend in its own right.
Set against this monthly detail, the 90-day window comparison (17.3% versus 15.2%) sits broadly within the range the series has occupied since late 2025. Volume has also been falling within the monthly data, consistent with the 39.7% drop recorded in the period comparison, though the monthly figures show volume has fluctuated substantially from month to month, including sharp increases in September 2025 (447 decisions) and February to March 2026 (532 and 659 decisions respectively). A falling total in the latest 90-day window should be read alongside that volatility rather than assumed to be a smooth downward glide.
Firm and product mix
Veste's top-firm rankings for irresponsible lending, all of which meet the minimum sample size of 30 decisions, show wide variation in uphold rates. Everyday Lending Limited recorded the highest uphold rate among the top ten firms, at 61.0% across 679 decisions (373 upheld, 82 partial, 224 not upheld). Loans 2 Go Limited followed at 59.5% across 718 decisions, and Casheuronet UK LLC at 59.1% across 1,412 decisions, the largest single-firm volume in the top ten. Elevate Credit International Limited recorded 48.9% across 1,136 decisions, though the bulk of its outcomes, 981 of 1,136, were partial upholds rather than full upholds, a pattern distinct from firms where outright upholds dominate.
At the other end, the high street banks in the list recorded markedly lower uphold rates: National Westminster Bank Plc at 22.3% across 732 decisions, Barclays Bank UK PLC at 22.5% across 710 decisions, and Lloyds Bank PLC at 25.3% across 700 decisions. NewDay Ltd sat in between at 39.4% across 1,203 decisions, and PDL Finance Limited at 38.4% across 674 decisions, with Gain Credit LLC at 31.9% across 841 decisions.
Veste records firms by the exact business name printed on each published decision. Subsidiaries of the same banking group are not rolled up into a single parent figure, so two entities belonging to the same wider group can appear as separate lines with different uphold rates. Readers comparing firms across this dataset should bear that in mind.
By product, short-term and payday credit carried the highest uphold rate among the categories Veste tracks for irresponsible lending, at 50.6% across 9,301 decisions, the largest product sample in the list. Guarantor loans recorded the single highest rate of any product, 68.7%, though on a much smaller base of 297 decisions. Personal loans stood at 33.9% across 8,925 decisions, motor finance (PCP/HP) at 34.4% across 2,919 decisions, overdrafts at 36.6% across 1,337 decisions, mortgages at 29.2% across 1,307 decisions, credit cards at 25.2% across 5,282 decisions, and current accounts at the lowest rate among sizeable categories, 16.2% across 380 decisions. Investment-related irresponsible lending complaints, a much smaller category at 114 decisions, recorded a rate of 42.5%.
Individual decisions as illustration
Four recent decisions dated 2026-07-07, all published on the same day, show how individual case facts drive outcomes regardless of the wider statistical pattern. In one, a lender was found to have verified a borrower's income and estimated essential spending but failed to account for her declared rental costs; the Ombudsman calculated that after loan repayments and existing credit commitments she would have had only £121.77 left each month, and the complaint was upheld with a direction to refund overpayments and remove adverse credit file information. In a second case involving the same lender, the Ombudsman reviewed bank statements and found sufficient disposable income, roughly £850 at initial lending and £1,050 at a subsequent credit limit increase, to support the firm's own assessment, and the complaint was not upheld.
A third case involved a firm ordered to remove interest, fees and charges from a run of loans after the Ombudsman found the lender should have stopped lending some way earlier than its own investigator had suggested, citing overlapping repayments and signs of financial difficulty visible in bank statements the firm had itself obtained. A fourth case, concerning a credit card and a subsequent limit increase, was not upheld after the Ombudsman concluded the lender's checks were proportionate and that lenders are not required to review a customer's full current account history in every case, distinguishing it from a separate overdraft complaint by the same complainant that had been upheld.
These four decisions are presented as examples of the range of reasoning the Ombudsman applies, not as evidence of a pattern at any particular firm. Affordability assessments, once considered proportionate to the size and type of lending in question, appear to turn heavily on the specific checks a firm carried out and what those checks did or did not capture.
What the data does and does not show
The data confirms a 2.1 percentage point rise in the uphold rate between two adjacent 90-day windows, alongside a substantial fall in the number of decisions published in the more recent window. Both figures are drawn from samples that meet Veste's minimum size threshold. What the data does not establish is why either has happened. Published Ombudsman decisions are not the same population as all complaints made to a firm, and a change in the mix of cases reaching a final decision, rather than any change in lender conduct, could produce a shift of this size. The monthly series shows the underlying rate has moved by several percentage points from month to month even within a single year, so a movement of just over two points across two quarters sits inside the normal range of variation this series has displayed.
The longer-run figures are more clear cut. The uphold rate for irresponsible lending has fallen in each successive year from 2022 (45.5%) through 2023 (32.7%), 2024 (31.2%), 2025 (20.8%) and into 2026 (16.1% so far), even as annual volumes have moved less consistently, from 3,189 decisions in 2022 down to 2,520 in 2023, up to 2,653 in 2024, up again to 3,482 in 2025, and 2,627 so far in 2026. Whatever caused that multi-year decline, whether changes in the types of cases being brought, the firms involved, or the Ombudsman's approach to specific lending scenarios, the data available here cannot say. Veste has not been given information about Ombudsman policy changes, regulatory guidance, or the composition of complaints referred by claims management companies, all of which sit outside this dataset.
The practical takeaway
For anyone monitoring this category, the more useful signal is the multi-year decline in the uphold rate rather than the latest quarterly wobble. A rise of 2.1 percentage points on a falling case count, within a series that has swung by more than that from month to month, does not on its own indicate that lenders are being treated more harshly or that affordability assessments have deteriorated. It is consistent with ordinary variation in a dataset of published decisions rather than with a change in trend. The clearer pattern, evident across five years of annual data, is that irresponsible lending complaints have become progressively less likely to succeed at the Ombudsman since 2022, even as the overall volume of published decisions in this category remains substantial.