Swimming with Sharks: An Replace

Yet, as we argued in our 2022 report Swimming with Sharks, the favored picture of a mortgage shark doesn’t all the time maintain.

In that report, we recognized {that a} majority of victims knew the mortgage shark earlier than borrowing
from them with many even contemplating them a pal. Loans sharks have been as, if no more, more likely to inflict psychological manipulation, on-line shaming, and verbal harassment as direct bodily violence.

Updating the unpublished dataset utilized in Swimming with Sharks, we discover that these traits persist. Between 2022 and 2025, 66 per cent of victims supported by the Illegal Money Lending Team (IMLT) met their mortgage shark by pals or household, 60 per cent thought-about their lender a pal earlier than borrowing from them, and 28 per cent have been threatened with social media shaming.

There is, furthermore, little proof that the demand for unlawful lending is abating. The commonest motive cited for borrowing from a mortgage shark was to cowl on a regular basis prices like family payments and groceries, with many different victims citing serving to household, masking the price of life occasions equivalent to funerals and weddings, automobile repairs, and enterprise prices.

These victims flip to unlawful lending as a result of they can’t – or assume they can’t – entry credit score elsewhere. Almost three quarters of those that attempt to entry different sources of credit score are rejected by regulated lenders. This is the hole unlawful lenders insidiously fill. Tackling unlawful cash lending requires each suppressing its provide and re-directing its demand.

To clear the waters, we’re calling for renewed motion to:

• clamp down on lenders, tackling legal exploitation on the excessive road and utilizing the Online Safety Act to crackdown on these abusing social media to harass victims;
• increase the availability of safer credit score, fulfilling promised frequent bond reform and assessing the place of high-cost credit score;
• buttress the debt advise sector, with stronger coaching mandates and heat referrals to the IMLT.

None of those insurance policies are expensive. They require small legislative amendments and the strengthening of motion already underway. But they might be life-changing, if not lifesaving, for these sinking in shark-infested waters.