Provident and Satsuma: what happened to the loans

Provident and Satsuma have stopped lending. If you are searching for either name, the chances are you already have a loan with one of them, or you have been contacted about one, and you want to know what happens next. The short answer is that the debt does not disappear when a brand stops lending. The balance stays payable to whoever now owns or services it, and the usual rules on missed payments still apply.

What has changed is who you deal with. Provident's home credit business and the Satsuma brand are no longer open to new customers, and the loans themselves have been run down, sold on or moved to collections. That means the firm writing to you today may not be the firm you originally borrowed from. It also means the complaints route for past customers is different from the one you would use for a live account.

This page sets out what each brand was, what happens if you still owe money, how to pay, what to do if you cannot, how the complaints scheme for past customers works, and what all of this does to your credit file. It also covers where to get free help, because the people most likely to search for these names are often the ones under the most pressure.

Provident and Satsuma have stopped lending: what it means for customers

The practical effect of a lender closing to new business is narrower than people expect. Your agreement does not end, the interest and charges set out in it do not stop applying on their own, and the money you have already borrowed is still owed. What ends is the lender's ability to sell you another loan, and often the branch or agent network that used to collect payments in person.

For home credit customers, that last point matters most. Home credit was collected at the door, in cash, by an agent. When a lender withdraws from that model, collections move to direct debit, card payment or a third party, and the person at the door stops coming. If you were used to paying weekly in cash, the change is administrative rather than legal: the amount owed is the same, but the way you pay it changes, and it is worth confirming the new arrangement in writing before the first payment is due.

For Satsuma customers, the loans were online, so the change is less visible. You may simply find that the online account is closed to new borrowing, that the balance has transferred, or that a different firm now writes to you. In all of these cases the underlying debt is unchanged.

If you are unsure who owns your loan, ask. A firm collecting a debt should be able to tell you who the creditor is, what the original agreement was, and how the balance has been calculated. Keep that correspondence.

What Provident home credit and Satsuma loans were

Provident was best known for home credit: small cash loans collected in person, usually weekly, by an agent who called at the borrower's home. The model suited people who wanted a fixed, small repayment and did not want to deal with a bank, and it priced for the cost of sending someone to the door. Satsuma was the online version of the same idea, aimed at borrowers who wanted a short-term or instalment loan without a home visit.

Both sat in the consumer credit market rather than the mortgage or savings market, and both were used heavily by people on lower or irregular incomes. That matters for what follows, because the rules that protect borrowers in this market are different from the ones that protect depositors. There is no deposit protection scheme for a loan, because a loan is money you owe rather than money you have saved.

The wider consumer credit market has changed a great deal since these brands were at their peak. The Financial Ombudsman Service now handles a large volume of consumer credit complaints, covering payday loans, the affordability of lending, and other types of lending including mortgages³. In the first quarter of 2026/27 it opened 2,103 complaints about personal loans, 1,060 about point of sale loans (non-motor), 210 about short term lending (payday loans) and 130 about buy now pay later loans⁵. Those figures show how much of this market ends up in dispute, and how routine an affordability complaint has become.

If you still owe money on a Provident or Satsuma loan

The debt survives the brand. If you stop paying, the consequences are the same as for any other unsecured borrowing. You can still be taken to court and ordered to pay what you owe, often with extra costs on top². That is the position for bank loans and overdrafts, and it applies to consumer credit debts generally.

A closed brand does not mean a written-off balance. Debts are assets: they get sold, and the buyer can pursue them. If a debt is sold, a notice tells the borrower who the new owner is and where to pay. Where no notice arrives and someone contacts a borrower out of the blue, the paperwork can be requested before any payment is made.

There is one important distinction to keep in mind. Some debts are treated as priority debts because the consequence of not paying is severe: mortgages are priority debts, and they are paid first as the lender could repossess the home and sell it to get their money⁶. A Provident or Satsuma loan is not in that category. It is unsecured, so the lender cannot repossess the home over it, but that does not make it optional, and a county court judgment can follow a borrower for years.

If you have several debts, the order in which you deal with them matters more than the total. Priority debts first, then the rest, and tell every creditor what you can realistically afford rather than agreeing to a payment you will miss.

Who now collects repayments and how to pay

Repayments on a sold or transferred loan are collected by whoever now owns it, or by a servicing firm acting for the owner. In practice you will be asked to pay by direct debit, standing order, card or bank transfer. Cash collection at the door has largely gone with the home credit model.

A few practical points apply to all of these:

• Confirm the creditor's name, the account reference and the outstanding balance in writing before you set up a payment.
• Set up the payment from your own bank account so you have a record of every instalment.
• If the amount you are asked for does not match your own records, ask for a statement of account rather than paying and querying later.
• Keep every letter, email and statement. If a dispute arises later, the paper trail is what settles it.

If you are paying a debt management company or a free debt advice service to distribute payments for you, check that the money is reaching the creditor and that the balance is falling. A payment that leaves your account is not the same as a payment that reduces the debt.

Struggling to repay: your options and free debt help

There are several routes, and they are not mutually exclusive. The first is to talk to the creditor and ask for a payment arrangement based on what you can actually afford. The second is to look at whether your existing borrowing can be restructured: making new arrangements with existing lenders, or making best use of existing credit options such as an overdraft, credit or store cards, a personal loan or mortgage extension, or borrowing from relatives⁷. Consolidating debts is one option among several, and it works best when it lowers the total cost rather than just stretching the term.

The third is a formal solution. Bankruptcy is one: it means you could be free from most of your debts, though there are some debts you might still have to pay, like child maintenance⁸. Bankruptcy has serious and long-lasting consequences, so it is a decision to take with advice rather than on your own.

Free, impartial help is available and it does not cost anything:

• MoneyHelper, the government-backed money guidance service, for debt and borrowing guidance.
• Debt advice charities, which can negotiate with creditors on your behalf.
• In Northern Ireland, Consumerline, which can refer a complaint to the Trading Standards Service for investigation or to the Financial Conduct Authority, which authorises lenders¹.

If you are on Universal Credit and money is being deducted from your payments, there is a separate route to query that: contact the Finance Support Service about Discretionary Support and short-term benefit advance loans⁹. Deductions from Universal Credit are dealt with by different teams from ordinary consumer debt, and the two should not be confused.

The complaints scheme for past Provident customers

If you believe you were lent money you could not afford, or that the lender acted irresponsibly, you may be able to complain. Consumers who feel that they have either been given unaffordable credit, or that the lender acted irresponsibly in providing the product, may be able to complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service¹⁰. The ombudsman's consumer credit remit covers complaints about payday loans, the affordability of the lending, or being unhappy with the quality of goods bought or hired with credit, and other types of lending including mortgages³.

The process is the same as for any financial complaint:

1. Talk to the lender or broker first. They need to have the chance to put things right¹¹.
2. Make a formal complaint to the firm and keep a copy.
3. If you are unhappy with the final response, take it to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Where a credit broker receives a complaint in relation to the subject matter of the scheme, it must forward the complaint to the lender and inform the consumer that it has been forwarded¹². That matters if you dealt with an intermediary rather than the lender directly: you do not have to work out who is responsible, the broker has to pass it on.

The ombudsman can order real remedies. Where a consumer was mis-sold a single-premium PPI policy and the policy remains in force, it will tell the business to cancel the policy, and in some cases it may decide to tell the business to pay compensation for any distress or inconvenience caused to the consumer¹³. For guarantor loans, where the borrower should not have been given the loan, the remedy can include refunding interest and charges paid, with interest, and removing adverse information from the credit file; where a balance remains, removing all interest and charges so the balance is only what was lent, deducting payments already made, with any overpayment refunded with interest¹⁴.

Complaints about this kind of lending are common and outcomes vary. In the first quarter of 2026/27, the ombudsman upheld 24% of point of sale loan (non-motor) complaints, out of 1,060 opened⁵. In the same quarter a year earlier it upheld 47% of 955 point of sale loan complaints and 17% of 129 short term lending (payday loan) complaints¹⁵. A complaint is not a guaranteed payout, and the uphold rate moves.

Where the scheme does not apply and what happened to late claims

Not every complaint is in scope, and the boundaries matter. The ombudsman's consumer credit jurisdiction is defined by the type of lending and the firm's status, and some arrangements fall outside it. Under the consumer credit rules, certain agreements are excluded from the affordability provisions altogether: the rules do not apply to an agreement secured on land, to a regulated deferred payment credit agreement, or to a borrower-lender agreement enabling overdrawing on a current account other than an authorised non-business overdraft agreement repayable on demand or within three months¹⁶.

Timing also matters. Where a scheme has a start date, payments or events before it are generally outside it. The Payment Systems Regulator's APP scam reimbursement policy is explicit that any payments made before the coming into effect of the policy are not within its scope¹⁷. The same principle runs through redress schemes generally: a scheme applies from its start date, not retrospectively to everything that came before.

There is also a limit on how far back some remedies reach. On pre-1997 indexation, the law only applies to future payments and does not allow backdated payments¹⁸. And where a scheme has already started, complaining to the ombudsman before it began does not mean starting again: if you complained about advice to transfer your pension before the redress scheme started, you do not need to do anything else¹⁹.

The practical lesson is to check the date of the conduct, the type of agreement and the firm's current status before assuming a complaint is in or out. If a firm has failed or stopped trading, the ombudsman can still consider complaints about firms that were in its jurisdiction at the time, but the remedy may depend on what is left of the firm.

Your credit file after the loans closed

Closing a brand does not clean a credit file. Accounts that were open, and any missed payments recorded while they were open, stay on your report for the standard retention period, and a settled account is marked as settled rather than deleted. If you are checking your file because you want to borrow again, look at the payment history rather than the account status.

Where a complaint succeeds, the remedy can include cleaning the file. For guarantor loans, where the borrower should not have been given the loan, the ombudsman can require the firm to remove any adverse information recorded on your credit file¹⁴. That is one of the few routes by which a legitimate adverse marker comes off, and it depends on the complaint succeeding rather than on the brand closing.

If you are getting help with payments, be aware of the interaction with your file. If you have already missed payments, any help you receive will impact your credit file⁴. Help that prevents a default is different from help that follows one.

It is worth checking all three credit reference agencies rather than one, because lenders report to different agencies and a marker can appear on one and not another. If something on your file is wrong, dispute it with the agency and with the firm that supplied it.

Borrowing elsewhere now that these loans are gone

With Provident and Satsuma out of the market, the alternatives are the mainstream ones. Building societies and banks may be able to offer you a personal loan⁷, and credit unions are another route for people who cannot get a bank loan or who want to borrow smaller amounts. Shopping around for the best terms from a reputable lender is the standard starting point⁷.

Consolidation is one option if you have several debts: making new arrangements with existing lenders, or making best use of existing credit options such as an overdraft, credit or store cards, a personal loan or mortgage extension, or borrowing from relatives⁷. It is not automatically cheaper. A consolidation loan replaces several payments with one, which is easier to manage, but the total cost depends on the rate and the term, and extending the term usually increases the total interest paid.

Some government-backed borrowing schemes have closed to new applications, so do not assume they are available: details of previous mortgage guarantee schemes, now closed to new applications, are published separately²⁰. If you are considering a mortgage-related product, check the current position rather than relying on an older article.

Before taking on any new borrowing, the affordability of priority debts comes first. Mortgages are priority debts, and they are paid first as the lender could repossess the home and sell it to get their money⁶. A new loan that makes the mortgage harder to pay is a step backwards.

Where to get help and how to complain

Free help comes from a small number of places, and none of them charge for debt advice. MoneyHelper is the government-backed service for money guidance. Debt advice charities can negotiate with creditors and, in some cases, help with an application for a formal solution. In Northern Ireland, Consumerline can refer a complaint to the Trading Standards Service for investigation or to the Financial Conduct Authority, which authorises lenders¹.

For a complaint about a Provident or Satsuma loan, the route is: complain to the firm, wait for its final response, then go to the Financial Ombudsman Service. The ombudsman is free to consumers, and it can look at complaints about payday loans, the affordability of the lending, and other types of lending³. It also handles complaints about bank accounts and bank cards, insurance for your home, car or travel, and problems with loans²¹, and about account closures, disputed transactions, IT failures and problems with switching services²².

If your complaint is about how your bank handled a scam payment, the ombudsman may be able to help if you are unhappy with how your bank or payment services provider handled a scam where you were tricked into making a payment²³. It can also look into complaints about the bank or payment service provider that received the money, considering steps taken to recover it and whether it should have had concerns about its customer's account²³.

If you are in financial difficulty with a mortgage as well, the ombudsman can look at complaints about financial difficulties affecting your ability to repay your mortgage, including complaints about mortgage arrears and charges, not being able to change or move your mortgage or take a payment holiday, and complaints about repossession before possession takes place or after it has happened⁴.