Novuna Personal Finance

Novuna Personal Finance is a lender. It provides personal loans, car and vehicle finance, and credit arranged at the till or online through shops, and it runs a separate business finance arm. It does not offer a current account, a savings account or a credit card, so it is not somewhere you would hold your everyday money.

That shapes everything about dealing with it. There is no branch network to walk into and no deposit balance to check. What you have with Novuna is a credit agreement: a fixed sum, a term, an instalment, and a set of terms covering what happens if you miss a payment or want to settle early. The brand was previously known as Hitachi Capital (UK) PLC, so an older agreement in that name is the same firm.

This page covers what Novuna lends for, how its charges arise, how to reach it, how to complain, and what protection applies to a loan. It does not list rates or fees, because those change and belong on the provider's own site.

What Novuna Personal Finance offers

Novuna's consumer business is built around lending rather than day-to-day banking. The main product types are personal loans, car and vehicle finance, and retail credit offered at the point of sale in shops. Each works differently, and the guides linked below explain the product type in general terms.

Personal loans

A personal loan is a fixed sum borrowed for an agreed amount of time, often for a big item such as a new phone or a boiler⁴. That description fits the core of what Novuna Personal Finance does on the consumer side. The loan is unsecured, which means it is not tied to an asset the lender can take back if you stop paying, and it is repaid in instalments over a set term.

How the cost works: the amount you repay is the sum borrowed plus interest, spread over the term. The interest rate you are offered depends on your circumstances and the lender's assessment, and the rate advertised is not necessarily the rate you get. For the current figures, Novuna's own site is the place to look. For how personal loans work in general, including what affects the rate you are offered and what happens if you repay early, see Loans: a complete guide.

Car and vehicle finance

Novuna Vehicle Solutions is one of the trading names on the FCA register, and vehicle finance is a substantial part of the group's lending¹. Car finance usually takes one of a few shapes: a personal loan used to buy a car outright, hire purchase where you pay instalments and own the car at the end, or a lease where you hand the car back. Which one you have changes what you can do with the car, when you own it, and what happens if you want to end the agreement early.

The cost of car finance is worked out from the amount financed, the term, the interest or the lease rental, and any deposit or part-exchange. Mileage limits and condition rules matter on lease and PCP-style deals, because exceeding them triggers charges. For the general rules on borrowing for a vehicle alongside other purposes, see Loans: a complete guide.

Retail credit and buy now, pay later

Novuna Retail Finance and Payby Finance are the names under which the firm provides credit at the point of sale, so a purchase in a shop or online can be funded by a Novuna agreement rather than by a card¹. This is the area where the rules have been tightening. Buy now, pay later is not one product but three: deferred payment credit, fixed sum loans, and short term interest free credit³. The government has said financial promotion rules will be amended to ensure BNPL advertisements are fair, clear, and not misleading⁵.

The practical point for a borrower is that retail credit is still credit. Missing payments can affect your credit file and lead to default charges, and the protections that apply to regulated credit agreements apply here too. For the wider picture, see Credit cards: a complete guide and Debt: a complete guide to help, solutions and your rights.

Business finance

Novuna Business Finance and Novuna Business Cashflow sit alongside the consumer side¹. These are for companies rather than individuals, and the rules, protections and complaint routes differ from consumer credit. If you run a business and are struggling, Business Debtline publishes guidance on separating business and household budgets, and warns that if your figures on your household budget are too low, any payment arrangement you agree with your creditors will be higher than necessary and you will find it hard to keep to it⁶.

How charges work

Novuna does not publish a single price list that applies to everyone, because the cost of borrowing depends on the product, the amount, the term and your circumstances. What can be said generally is how each type of charge arises.

• Personal loans: interest on the amount borrowed, spread across the instalments.
• Car finance: interest or rental, plus charges for excess mileage or condition on lease-style deals.
• Retail credit: interest or a fixed charge, depending on which of the three BNPL structures applies³.
• All of them: charges for missed payments, set out in the agreement.

The FCA's consumer credit rules include a specific protection against a firm pushing you further into debt. A firm must not refinance a customer's existing credit with the firm, other than by exercising forbearance, unless it does so at the customer's request or with the customer's consent, and reasonably believes it is not against the customer's best interests⁷. In plain terms, a lender cannot roll your borrowing into a bigger loan to suit itself.

Contacting Novuna Personal Finance

There are two separate contact routes, and it matters which one you use.

For a complaint or a problem with an agreement, the quickest way is through the customer portal. You can also call 0344 375 5500, email complaintsteam@novunapersonalfinance.co.uk, or write to Novuna Personal Finance, 2 Apex View, Leeds, LS11 9BH.

If you are worried about your finances rather than about a specific dispute, there is a separate support line on 0344 375 5488, open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, excluding bank holidays.

The two published routes give different numbers for the financial difficulty line and the complaints line. The customer portal is described as the quickest for complaints, and the support line is described as the route for anyone worried about their finances.

How to complain, and what happens next

Start with Novuna. A complaint made through the portal, by phone, by email or by post goes into the firm's complaints process. The firm has to give you a final response within a set period, and if it does not, or if you are unhappy with what it says, you can escalate.

The Financial Ombudsman Service is the free, independent scheme that looks at complaints about financial firms. It follows the Financial Conduct Authority's Dispute Resolution Rules (DISP)². You do not need a lawyer, and there is no charge to you. The ombudsman can order a firm to put things right, including paying compensation.

Complaints volumes give a sense of scale. In the first quarter of 2025/26, the ombudsman recorded 7,803 complaints about current accounts². That figure is about current accounts generally, not about Novuna, which does not offer them, but it shows how many people use the service.

If your complaint is about insurance sold alongside a Novuna product, the ombudsman handles those too. It has published decisions on matters such as accidental damage cover under buildings insurance, which illustrate how it reads policy terms⁸.

Where your money is protected, and where it is not

This is the part most people get wrong about a lender. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme protects deposits and certain investments when a firm fails. It does not protect a loan, because a loan is money you owe, not money you hold. If Novuna were to stop trading, your debt would not disappear; it would be collected by whoever takes on the book.

The FSCS does cover some things connected to pensions and investments, and it can only protect you if the Financial Conduct Authority has authorised your pension provider⁹. That is a different situation from borrowing. If you use a regulated broker, you are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme for the advice and arrangements it makes¹⁰. National Savings and Investments is the exception that proves the rule on deposits: it is backed by HM Treasury and protects 100% of your savings¹¹. None of that applies to a Novuna loan.

What does protect you as a borrower is the regulatory framework. Novuna is authorised and regulated by the FCA¹. The consumer credit rules constrain what it can do, including the refinancing restriction described above⁷. The ombudsman provides a free route to challenge a decision². And the Personal Savings Allowance, which affects the tax you pay on savings interest, is still based on UK-wide rules, so it does not vary by nation¹².

How it differs across the UK nations

Consumer credit regulation is a reserved matter, so the rules that govern a Novuna loan are the same whether you live in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. The FCA authorisation, the ombudsman route and the consumer credit rules apply UK-wide¹.

Where the nations differ is in the wider financial picture around borrowing, which affects how much room a household has to absorb a loan repayment.

The 16 to 19 Bursary Fund operates in England only, with a different scheme in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which is an example of how devolved support varies¹⁶. For the full picture of how money rules differ by nation, see Money in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: how the rules differ.