Shawbrook Bank is a name many may be unfamiliar with as they are a specialist lender, unless that is if you are a timeshare owner. Timeshare owners will be all too familiar with the personal loan arm of Shawbrook, which teamed up with Fractional Timeshare resort owners Club La Costa (CLC) and Diamond Resort (DR).
Shawbrook Bank was responsible for thousands of timeshare finance agreements offered to timeshare owners. From what we have learned from the misery of many timeshare owners, Shawbrook provided and approved thousands of loans to CLC and DR timeshare owners that have been found to have been mis-sold.
Upon investigation of the marketing material obtained from CLC in particular. There was overwhelming evidence of timeshare investment selling. What is particularly interesting about this is that under Directive 2008/122/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council.
Article 3 (4) clearly states:
A timeshare or a long-term holiday product shall not be marketed or sold as an investment.
There has also been overwhelming evidence produced to Shawbrook and the Financial Ombudsman Service that both CLC and DR were actively selling Fractional Timeshares as ‘investments’.
The timeshare-selling training manuals produced by CLC and DR focused on selling their Fractional Timeshares as investments. Ironically, banks like Shawbrook, who have assisted in the systematic mis-selling of timeshare finance, are now adopting a brazen-faced approach to put timeshare consumers to the ‘sword’ to prove the mis selling and denying overwhelming evidence to limit the damage and loss to their business and their balance sheets.
The period in which these loans were at their peak and being indiscriminately sold to timeshare owners, they were covered the years 2012 to 2018.
Shawbrook, within their 2015 accounts, made some important announcements about consumer lending and, in particular, holiday ownership companies with whom they had partnered.
SEE THE EXTRACT HERE BELOW FROM SHAWBROOK BANK’S 2015 ACCOUNTS
Shawbrook Bank recorded a record-breaking year in 2015. It attributed this upturn in profits within its accounts hugely to the success of its consumer lending activities within the Holiday Ownership sector, timeshare.
Within the extract taken from their accounts, they say that ‘the business has an established reputation in this sector.
If that statement weren’t true, one would not doubt that it certainly is now, but perhaps for all the wrong reasons. Shawbrook go on to say,
‘Working with carefully chosen holiday ownership companies to offer consumers holiday ownership finance.’
With the demise of CLC, many other timeshare resorts like theirs have ceased trading or gone into administration. With hindsight, some might say that needed to have been more diligent!
The fight goes on, and Shawbrook and others continue to try and thwart thousands of consumers’ timeshare misselling claims aided by the hapless incompetence of the Financial Ombudsman Service, albeit they have been defeated in law at Judicial Review.
A further damming indictment aimed at Shawbrook is their flagrant breaches of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) DISP rules. For those unfamiliar with these rules. They form part of the FCA’s Handbook, the regulator’s ‘Bible’. All regulated entities must abide rigidly by these rules. However, some would say that banks and large financial institutions are afforded immunity from sanction under the rules for non-compliance.
A serious breach of the DISP rules would be a bank allowing their financial products, timeshare loans to be sold by unregulated credit intermediaries in lay terms unregulated and unauthorised third parties being one such example.
There is overwhelming evidence that Shawbrook allowed their regulated loan products to be sold to UK consumers whilst overseas to purchase timeshare products.
Shawbrook denies they breached the DISP rules by allowing unregulated intermediaries to sell their regulated financial products. The Financial Ombudsman Service condone Shadowbrook’s breaches by apparently refusing to report their violations to the FCA to take the appropriate enforcement action.
If you or someone you know has been a victim of Shawbrook Bank’s mis-selling financial products and have presented a mis-selling claim to them or the Financial Ombudsman Service and you think you have been mistreated, we want to hear from you.
Please email us with your story in strict confidence at shawbrook@timeshare-banking-scandal.co.uk
If we can publicise your story, we will contact you.
If you currently work or have previously worked at Shawbrook Bank and want to be a Whistleblower, we can give you a legal indemnity of anonymity under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998
CONTACT US IN THE STRICT CONFIDENCE AT whistleblowers.sb@timeshare-banking-scandal.co.uk
This website seeks to expose the injustices of a system of quasi-law that allows the UK’s largest regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and their justice, the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), that fails to deliver an effective, fair and accessible Alternative Dispute Resolution to UK consumers who it is intended to protect against the inequities and misdemeanours of the financial and insurance institutions. PPI, PENSIONS and NOW TIMESHARE.
