A duty of customer care should apply to student loans in the same way it does to other financial products, MPs have been told.
The House of Commons Treasury Select Committee heard from experts on 2 June as part of its inquiry into student loans, including former banker Philip Augar, who said he felt “outrage” at the way the terms of student loans have been changed retrospectively.
Augar, who chaired a 2019 review of UK higher education, said Plan 2 student loans should be treated more like a conventional financial services product.
“A financial services organisation has a duty of customer care and that really ought to apply to government in the context of loans sold effectively to young people making the first important financial decision of their life,” he said.
“There’s a moral issue here. You shouldn’t be retrospectively changing the terms in quite a complicated, almost sneaky way, bit by bit.”
