Black Horse

Black Horse is a UK motor finance lender. It does not sell cars itself: it provides the loan behind a purchase made at a dealership, and it operates through more than 4,500 approved Black Horse finance dealerships across the UK¹. The agreements it writes cover cars, motorbikes, caravans and motorhomes, and the two main shapes are hire purchase and personal contract purchase.

Black Horse is a car and motorcycle finance lender that works through dealerships rather than branches. If you signed finance at a franchised dealer, the lender behind the agreement may be Black Horse even though the brand on the paperwork is the marque you bought. It also trades under names including Halifax, Jaguar Financial Services, Land Rover Financial Services, Yamaha Finance, Ducati Finance, Harley-Davidson Finance and CarSelect².

Black Horse lends for hire purchase, personal contract purchase and leasing, and its agreements run through the dealer network rather than a branch network. Its website is www.blackhorse.co.uk³. The business has been trading since 1960 and remains active⁴.

What Black Horse offers: car, motorbike, caravan and motorhome finance

Black Horse writes finance for four kinds of vehicle. Cars are the largest part of it, and the choice at the dealership is usually between personal contract purchase, hire purchase and leasing⁵. Motorcycles are financed on the same hire purchase and PCP structure, and the insurance rules differ: on a motorcycle, third party, fire and theft cover is acceptable, while cars, caravans and motorhomes must be covered fully comprehensively¹.

Caravan and motorhome finance works like car finance in structure, with the vehicle as security for the loan. That matters more than it sounds. With hire purchase and PCP deals the loan is secured against the vehicle, which means that if you fail to keep up with the repayments the vehicle can be repossessed⁷. The same is true of the caravan or motorhome sitting on your drive.

Black Horse also appears on agreements for electric vehicles, where the finance arrangement is the same as for a petrol or diesel car but the running costs and charging arrangements differ. If you are weighing up what a car costs to run as well as to buy, the loans guide sets out how borrowing for a vehicle compares with other ways of paying for it.

PCP or hire purchase: how each Black Horse agreement works

Both are hire purchase agreements in law. Some creditors use the term personal contract purchase to describe hire purchase agreements for vehicles, and the two sit under the same legal framework⁸. What differs is what happens at the end.

With hire purchase, you pay higher monthly payments than you would on PCP, and you own the car at the end of the agreement term⁹. With PCP, the monthly payments are lower because you are only paying off part of the car's value, and the finance company's prediction of how much the car will drop in value over the term, usually 24 or 36 months, sets the final payment⁸. PCP is a flexible car financing option that can offer lower monthly payments than a personal loan or hire purchase car finance agreement⁸.

Under either, the vehicle is not fully owned by you until the last payment to the finance agreement is made¹⁰. Black Horse buys the car on your behalf and owns it for the duration of the finance agreement, so if payments are not kept up the car can be repossessed¹¹.

One practical difference sits in the overpayment rules. On a hire purchase agreement you can choose to reduce your monthly payment amount or reduce the length of your agreement⁶. You cannot shorten the length of your agreement with PCP finance⁶.

Getting Black Horse finance through a dealer

Black Horse finance is arranged at the dealership, not directly from Black Horse in most cases. The dealer submits the application, and the lender decides. That means the price you negotiate for the vehicle and the finance terms are two separate conversations, and it is worth treating them that way.

The dealer is also the first point of contact for anything about the vehicle itself. Black Horse tells customers to contact the dealership for any recall work or warranty repairs¹. If something goes wrong with the car rather than the loan, the dealer is where it starts, and the consumer protection guide explains what rights sit with the buyer when a vehicle is faulty.

If you are buying a used car and want to compare paying for it outright against borrowing, the loans guide covers personal loans, and the credit scores guide explains what a lender sees when it assesses an application.

Managing your agreement online

Black Horse customers manage agreements through the account area on its own website. You will need your agreement details to register, and the site is where you make extra payments, check your balance and find your settlement figure.

Extra payments can be made online between 8am and 10pm⁶. There is one timing rule that catches people out: you cannot make an extra payment in the 5 days before your Direct Debit is due⁶. If you want to overpay, do it earlier in the month rather than in the days running up to the collection.

Paying Black Horse: Direct Debit, debit card and missed payments

Direct Debit is the standard method, and it is the one the overpayment rules are built around. Black Horse sets out its accepted payment methods on its own help pages, and these can change, so check there for what is currently available rather than relying on what a dealer told you at the point of sale.

Paying a finance agreement by credit card is usually treated as a cash withdrawal, and card issuers typically charge a fee for that¹³. So the cost of paying that way is not just the finance payment. If you pay by debit card and something goes wrong with the transaction, you may be able to make a chargeback claim, which enables you to dispute a card transaction and request your money back for something you have paid for¹⁴.

Missing payments has consequences that escalate. Extra charges are added if you miss payments¹⁵. On credit debts like credit cards, overdrafts and personal loans, a creditor can ask you to pay the whole amount owed if you do not catch up¹⁶, and a motor finance agreement secured on the vehicle carries the added risk of repossession⁷. If you are already behind, the debt guide sets out the free advice routes and the options that exist before a lender takes action.

Making extra payments or settling early

There are no fees and charges for making extra payments on a Black Horse agreement⁶. That is not universal across lending: on a Green Deal loan, for example, you can pay the loan off early but there may be extra costs¹⁷. On a Black Horse agreement the charge is not the issue; the arithmetic is.

Making an overpayment could mean you pay less interest, but this only happens if interest was added, and the amount may be small if you overpay later in your agreement⁶. Early in a term, more of each payment goes on interest, so an overpayment does more work. Late in a term, most of the interest has already been charged and the saving is correspondingly smaller.

If the extra payment is more than you have left to pay, you can settle your agreement instead⁶. Ask Black Horse for a settlement figure before sending anything, because the figure is only valid for a set period and it changes as interest accrues.

Ending a Black Horse agreement early with voluntary termination

The Consumer Credit Act gives you the statutory right to terminate your hire purchase or PCP agreement at any time, and this is called voluntary termination¹⁸. It is a right in law, not a favour from the lender, and it applies to both hire purchase and PCP agreements.

There are conditions. You can voluntarily terminate the agreement at any time before the last payment is due, if the lender has not already terminated it¹⁹. You can end the agreement at any time, but only if the creditor has not issued a default notice²⁰. You will not be able to voluntarily terminate your HP or PCP agreement if your lender has already defaulted the account¹⁸.

What it costs depends on how far you have got. If you end the agreement yourself, you will owe up to half the agreement, plus any arrears and reasonable charges if the car is damaged¹⁹. On a Bank of Scotland car finance agreement, which sits in the same group, you will need to return the car and have paid half of the total amount payable as detailed on your agreement documentation¹¹. If you end the agreement, you will not get back any of the payments you already made²⁰.

The process has one step people get wrong. It is very important that you tell your creditor in writing that you are terminating and ending your agreement²¹. A phone call is not enough.

Personal contract hire works differently. It is not generally possible to terminate a PCH agreement early, and if you do, you may need to pay the full amount remaining on the lease¹⁸. If your agreement is a lease rather than hire purchase or PCP, the voluntary termination right does not apply in the same way.

Looking after the vehicle: insurance, servicing and trips abroad

The agreement sets out what you must do with the vehicle while you are paying for it. You must have fully comprehensive insurance cover on the vehicle, and the policy should cover the full amount of finance on your vehicle¹. On a motorcycle, third party, fire and theft cover is acceptable instead¹.

Servicing is a condition too. You must service it in line with the manufacturer's guidelines, or any warranty¹, and make sure it is in good condition and repair for its age and mileage, at your own expense¹. Keep your service records with the vehicle and keep the registration document up to date¹. Those records are what a lender looks at when the car comes back, so a missing service history can turn into a charge at the end of an agreement.

If you take the vehicle abroad, tell Black Horse and your insurer first. The finance agreement does not stop applying because the car is in another country, and the insurance guide explains how cover works when you travel.

Motor finance commission complaints and how to claim

The Financial Ombudsman Service resolved 7,100 complaints about motor finance commission in Q3 2025/26, mainly about fixed commission²². In Q1 2025/26 it processed 21,500 new complaints about motor finance commission across all financial products²³. Those are large numbers, and they reflect a dispute about whether dealers were paid commission in a way that was not properly disclosed.

You do not need to use a claims management company to make a complaint. It is free to do it yourself²⁴. If you choose to use a claims management company for this type of complaint, they should fully explain the temporary complaint handling rules, and make sure their advertising is not misleading²⁵.

The FCA publishes a list of lenders for car finance complaints, and Black Horse appears on it². Complaints about unaffordable lending are also within the ombudsman's scope: it sees complaints about unaffordable lending across a range of credit products, from car finance to payday lending²⁶. Consumer credit complaints more broadly cover payday loans, the affordability of the lending, or being unhappy with the quality of goods bought or hired with credit²⁷.

If you use a claims company and are unhappy with it, complain directly to the company first, give them up to eight weeks, then escalate to the Claims Management Ombudsman if needed²⁸. Bringing a complaint to the Claims Management Ombudsman is straightforward and will not cost you anything²⁹. You can also complain to the regulator if you are unhappy with the conduct of a claims company³⁰.

Complaints about the vehicle or service, and the Financial Ombudsman

Start with Black Horse or the dealer. If you are not getting help from the credit card company or the car finance provider, you can take your case to the free Financial Ombudsman Service³¹. The same applies to a complaint about a car dealer³².

The ombudsman's remit covers bank accounts and bank cards, insurance for your home, car or when you travel to another country, and problems with loans³³. It helps resolve complaints about issues such as account closures, disputed transactions, IT failures, and problems with switching services³⁴. An online complaint checker tells consumers if the ombudsman can help and what to do next³⁵, and you can ask someone else to help you with the complaint or speak on your behalf, which might be a friend, family member or support worker³⁶.

Black Horse had 8,102 new cases referred to the ombudsman between January and June 2025³⁷, up from 4,981 in the first half of 2024³⁸. Those figures are context, not a verdict: they show the volume of disputes, not who was right.

If a lender has failed or stopped serving customers, the ombudsman can still look at complaints about how it behaved beforehand. Where a firm has gone out of business, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme may be able to help, and the consumer protection guide explains how that works.