Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps he is taking to ensure that there is full market participation in real-time data-sharing in the short-term credit market.

The Government agrees that market-wide credit data sharing is key to effective affordability assessments in the high-cost, short-term credit market. In February 2014 the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) asked the payday lending industry to identify and remove any blockages to real-time data sharing as a matter of urgency. The FCA reports that there has been substantial recent progress made by the industry in this area. Over 90% of high-cost, short-term lenders by market share are meeting the FCA’s expectations to share data in real-time.

The FCA expects that the proportion of firms using real-time data sharing to further increase by the time the authorisation process is complete for most high-cost short-term credit firms. The FCA will continue to monitor progress to keep this momentum, and ensure that there continues to be improvement in this area.