Satsuma Loans - Irresponsible Practice?

This is more of a discussion rather than a rant, however I would like to address a serious flaw in Provident Finance's handling of Satsuma Loans' responsible lending practice.

I will keep this short and basic, to avoid confusion. To put it in simple terms, Satsuma Loans themselves claim on their website that two (2) is the maximum number of loans that can be active at once.

The evidence of this is here:



Anyone who has an account with Satsuma Loans can independently check this for themselves, however the specific page detailing this appears to be locked from non-authenticated access.

Courtesy of the person who has shared this information with me, I can also provide a list of agreements which this particular person has with them, currently all three of them:



This is a picture illustration only and their corresponding personally identifiable information has been removed before publishing. I can confirm however, that all three agreements were granted amounts exceeding that of £200.

For a creditor who claims to restrict lending to a specific number, their eligibility checking mechanism appears to have no recognition of the customer's current commitments. Aside from that, the credit assessment module should be taking these other loans into account, as part of a mandatory affordability assessment.

I would also like to share with you that the person who has come forward with this information has been landed into difficult circumstances with trying to pay these loans off. After their income being reduced unexpectedly, they are now stuck with three individual loans, all totaling high amounts due to the up-front interest slapped on the total repayable balance. They are keeping up with the monthly re-payments, but are stuck in a long-term commitment of these loans and can't commit their remaining income elsewhere.

I haven't been able to look into the legal side of this or whether the FCA, financial ombudsman or other related agencies would consider this irresponsible lending practices, however enticing someone who is potentially vulnerable or susceptible to borrowing with eligibility alerts about further loans, especially after stating that two is the maximum is bang out of order.

What are your thoughts about this and could Satsuma Loans be adding to the ever-growing problem of irresponsible lending on the market?