Lowell & First direct Loan (HSBC) UK debt - now living in Spain

[UmBongo2000]

Hi all,

I've been reading the forum and I do like the no nonsense non judgemental approach.

I have been living in Spain for over 7 years, all fully legal here.

I have a personal loan with First Direct, initially for £20,000 but now its down to £10,000.

Problem is my income has dropped dramatically and I can't see it increasing in the near future, I'm struggling to keep up the payments on this debt and I was curious what First Direct could do if I just stopped paying?

They have my current address in Spain, it's a house we own with a mortgage on it. This isn't how I would like to do things, but when I have contacted them to discuss changing the payments they have been surprisingly unhelpful.

I'm just exploring my options at the moment and any advice would be appreciated.

[honeybee13]

Hello, welcome to CAG. 

 

I expect the people in the know will be along later with advice for you. Please bear with us until they're able to get here. 

 

Best, HB

[unclebulgaria67]

UK Government since Brexit has not been able to gain agreement with the EU, to enable easy cross border debt enforcement.

 

So, if you just stopped paying, First Direct would after a period treat the debt as non performing and send many debt collection letters.  Then after a long period, they will pass on or sell the debt to debt collection companies. There are a few who chase debt across the  EU and they have offices in many countries, so you could have debt collection agents attend where you are living, to see if you wanted to come to a repayment arrangement. Of course without any Court judgement there is very little they could do.

 

As you don't live in the UK, difficult to gain any UK Court judgement as you are not resident in the UK and if the debt owner did get a UK CCJ, it would be quite expensive to try to gain a new judgement to enforce in a Spanish Court. 

 

For a £10,000 debt, although it may appear quite a lot of money, is quite small,  when Banks consider how much it is worth spending to recover such a debt.

[UmBongo2000]

I think thats my main concern is if a Spanish company ends up owning the debt, what is the potential worst case scenario?

[Badtimes123]

Hello, I would suggest IF that were to happen it would be a long way into the future. It is most likely as per UB's comments.

 

As they have your address abroad, it is likely you would just receive many threatening letters from Original Creditor and DCA's acting on their behalf, with little real world action or impact to yourself.

 

With that said, I'm not sure on how debts work in Spain once sold to a company there, you should research this, however it is my suspicion they are a carbon copy of the UK and you can simply ignore them.

 

All the best

 

BT

[UmBongo2000]

Thanks for the replies. I just wanted to clarify what I should do, so I can get it straight in my head.

 

1. Stop all payments, then ignore all letters from the bank to my Spanish address.

2. Also ignore any debt collector communication once the bank has passed the debt on.

3. Wait it out.

 

I know I'm going over the same info, but I just want to make sure I approach this the right way. Thanks again!

[dx100uk]

there is nothing anyone can do to you if you are resident abroad as long as you have no assets in the uk they could get a backdoor CCJ and turn it into a charging order.

 

dx

 

[UmBongo2000]

Thanks for confirming, I have no assets in the UK at all. Such a weight off my mind!

[UmBongo2000]

Lowells have just send an email to my wife, looking for me in regard to the debt.

Not sure why the email was sent to her as the bank should have my details.

They are asking for me to call them,

should I get in touch to let them know my Spanish address and to only contact me instead of my wife?

Or just ignore the emails also?

[dx100uk]

threads merged for you and title updated

i'd simply ignore all emails/txt/phone calls - there is nothing they can do.

 

[UmBongo2000]

OK thanks for confirming, really appreciate all you do on this site.