Business and personal Standards of Lending Practice ended in 2025

The Lending Standards Board (LSB) has set out the lifespan of its Standards and Codes, confirming that the Standards of Lending Practice for Business Customers ran from 2017 to 2025 and the Standards of Lending Practice for Personal Customers from 2016 to 2025¹. The LSB itself wound down, and the development and launch of a further code on access to financial services for ethnic minority-led businesses was paused with that wind-down¹.

The business Standards were one of just four industry codes formally recognised by the Financial Conduct Authority, according to the LSB, and covered SMEs with a consolidated turnover of up to £25m across loan, commercial mortgage, overdraft and credit card products¹. The LSB states that lending to limited companies and business lending above £25,000 sits outside the FCA's regulatory perimeter, and that it also oversaw a separate version of the Standards covering asset finance for SMEs¹. Registered firms included high street lenders, digital-only banks, challenger banks and dedicated SME lenders¹.

The personal Standards replaced the Lending Code and set best practice for overdraft, credit card, charge card and unsecured loan products provided to consumers¹. The LSB describes them as pioneering an outcomes-focused approach to regulation, on the basis that a prescriptive rules-based approach did not create the necessary incentive for firms to consider whether their actions were delivering the right customer outcome¹. They incorporated remedies from the FCA's Credit Card Market Study¹.

Two earlier codes are also listed. The Contingent Reimbursement Model Code ran from 2019 to 2024 and, by its last full year, covered over 90% of authorised push payment scams, with money lost to those scams declining 20% from its peak¹. It was wound down once the Payment Systems Regulator introduced a statutory scheme for mandatory APP fraud reimbursement, which the LSB notes did not introduce requirements for prevention and detection¹. The Access to Banking Standard ran from 2017 to 2021, and provisions from it formed parts of the new FCA requirements on branch closures¹.

Why it matters for households

The personal Standards covered consumer overdrafts, credit cards, charge cards and unsecured loans, so their ending removes a set of best-practice commitments that registered lenders had signed up to for those products¹. The business Standards applied to SMEs with turnover up to £25m, a group the LSB says sits largely outside the FCA's regulatory perimeter for lending to limited companies and for business borrowing above £25,000¹. For scam victims, the reimbursement position changed earlier: the CRM Code's voluntary approach was replaced by a statutory mandatory reimbursement scheme run by the Payment Systems Regulator, which the LSB says does not include prevention and detection requirements¹. On branch closures, provisions from the Access to Banking Standard fed into FCA requirements, so that area now sits under the regulator rather than the LSB¹. The LSB has not reported what, if anything, replaces the personal and business Standards for the products they covered.

What happens next

No successor arrangements for the personal and business Standards have been reported. The proposed code for ethnic minority-led businesses remains paused following the LSB's wind-down¹.