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If your car was on finance before 28 January 2021, there’s a real chance your dealer or broker earned a bigger commission by quietly pushing up your interest rate, and you could be due money back. The fastest way to find out is to run Makeapcpclaim’s free 60-second agreement finder, which needs no car registration or lender paperwork. Payouts vary widely, but the FCA and Financial Ombudsman Service have both confirmed that many customers are affected.
TL;DR:
- Claims are primarily valid for agreements from before January 28, 2021, involving dealer discretion or high commission rates exceeding 10% of the loan value.
- Discretionary commission arrangements were standard practice before the FCA banned them, often leading to inflated interest rates without borrowers’ knowledge.
- The redress process factors in the loan size, interest rate, length of agreement, and commission amount, with larger commissions and undisclosed rates increasing potential payouts.
- Verifying eligibility requires checking original paperwork for interest rate, commission disclosures, and agreement dates, which can now be done instantly with Makeapcpclaim’s free tool.
- Submitting a claim does not impact credit reports, and pursuing redress does not affect your existing credit standing unless the agreement is still active or the terms change during resolution.
A discretionary commission arrangement let car dealers and brokers set or adjust the interest rate on your finance deal, within limits agreed with the lender. The higher the rate they chose, the bigger the commission they pocketed. It sounds like a small technicality. It wasn’t. It meant the person selling you the car had a direct financial incentive to make your loan more expensive, and you almost certainly never knew that.
The FCA banned discretionary commission models from 28 January 2021, stating plainly that the structure gave brokers reason to inflate rates at the customer’s expense. Before the ban, this wasn’t a rare arrangement buried in the small print of a handful of dodgy dealerships. It was standard practice across large parts of the motor finance industry for years.
DCAs aren’t the only route to a claim, though. Two related categories matter just as much:
If your agreement doesn’t fit the classic DCA pattern, it’s still worth checking whether one of these applies. Many customers assume they’re ineligible because their paperwork doesn’t mention “discretionary” anywhere, then discover the commission structure itself was the problem.
Eligibility isn’t a single yes/no test. It depends on when you took out the finance, how the commission worked, and whether the numbers cross certain thresholds. Here’s a practical way to work through it:
Statistic: The FCA has stated that millions of car finance customers could be owed compensation under its redress scheme, making this one of the largest consumer redress exercises the UK motor finance sector has seen.
Small commission and no-interest deals are the main carve-outs. Beyond those, if a dealer had any discretion over your rate and didn’t tell you how that affected their pay, you’ve got grounds to at least ask the question.
There’s no flat refund figure. Redress calculations use an estimated loss model rather than simply handing back every penny of commission paid. In practice, firms typically apply a percentage discount to the interest element of your agreement, commonly cited figures applying differing percentage discounts for more recent and earlier agreements, then add back the commission itself plus interest on that amount.
That sounds technical, and it is. What it means for you is straightforward: your payout depends on your loan size, your interest rate, how long you held the agreement, and how much commission was involved.
Statistic: Consumer guidance from MoneySavingExpert has referenced average redress outcomes where many consumers recover a substantial share of the commission paid on their agreement, though individual results vary considerably depending on the specifics of the deal.
Treat any “typical payout” figure you see online as a rough guide, not a promise. The only way to know your own number is to get your actual agreement details checked.
Before you can complain, you need to know what you’re dealing with. Dig out your original finance agreement, whether that’s a PCP or HP contract, and look for a few specific things.
If you can’t lay your hands on the paperwork, or you’re not sure what you’re even looking for, that’s exactly the gap Makeapcpclaim’s free tool closes. It finds your car finance agreements in under 60 seconds, with no car registration number and no lender paperwork required upfront, and gives you the information you need to move forward with a complaint.
Pro Tip: Screenshot everything as you go, not just the final agreement page. The APR figure, the dealer and lender names, and any disclosure wording can all matter later, and paper originals have a habit of going missing exactly when you need them.
Even a partial agreement or an old statement showing your monthly payments can be enough to start the process. You don’t need a complete file to get moving.
A strong complaint is specific, not emotional. Lenders deal with thousands of these, and the ones that get taken seriously quickly are the ones that state the facts clearly.
Your complaint should include:
Keep your language factual. Something like: “I believe my dealer had discretion to set my interest rate and received commission linked to that rate, which was not disclosed to me. I am requesting that you review my agreement under the FCA’s discretionary commission arrangement guidance and provide redress if applicable.” That’s it. You don’t need legal jargon, and piling on doesn’t help your case.
Attach whatever supporting documents you have: the agreement itself, any correspondence with the dealer, and bank statements showing your payments. Keep copies of everything you send and a record of when you sent it.
Pro Tip: Send your complaint by email or through the lender’s online portal rather than by phone. A phone call gives you no paper trail, and firms are required to log and respond to written complaints within set timescales.
Once submitted, the lender must issue a final response. Given the volume of complaints firms are currently handling, response times have been extended under temporary FCA rules, covered in more detail in the section below. If you’re not satisfied with the outcome, or you don’t hear back in time, you can escalate to the Financial Ombudsman Service. For a fuller walkthrough of this process, Makeapcpclaim’s guide on how to claim car finance compensation in the UK covers the current rules in more depth.
The FCA’s DISP App 5 rules set out temporary complaint-handling requirements specifically for motor finance commission complaints, and they exist because the volume of complaints threatened to overwhelm normal processes. Firms must retain relevant records, and referral windows to the Financial Ombudsman Service have been extended well beyond the usual timeframes to accommodate the scale of this issue.
Here’s roughly what the process looks like in practice:
| Stage | What happens | Typical timescale |
|---|---|---|
| Complaint submitted | Lender logs and acknowledges your complaint | Within days |
| Firm investigation | Lender reviews agreement and commission structure | Extended under DISP App 5 rules |
| Final response | Firm upholds, rejects, or offers redress | Can take considerably longer than standard complaints |
| FOS referral | If unresolved, you escalate to the ombudsman | Extended referral window applies |
| FOS decision | Ombudsman reviews and issues a ruling | Varies by case complexity |
Patience matters here. The scale of this issue means even a straightforward, well-evidenced complaint can take months to resolve, particularly if it needs to go all the way to the ombudsman.
Makeapcpclaim’s free agreement finder does the legwork most people get stuck on: locating which finance agreements you’ve had and pulling together the details a complaint actually needs. It runs in under 60 seconds and asks for nothing upfront, no car registration, no lender account logins, no scanned paperwork.
Here’s what the process actually involves:
This model exists because most people don’t have the time or inclination to dig through years-old paperwork and interpret FCA rules themselves. You get a quick, evidence-based answer on whether it’s worth pursuing, without doing the detective work solo.
Submitting a discretionary commission claim does not appear on your credit file, and it has no direct bearing on your credit score. You’re raising a complaint about how your finance agreement was sold, not disputing a debt or missing a payment, so credit reference agencies have no reason to record it.
Where things get slightly more nuanced is around future lending. If your claim succeeds and you receive redress, that’s simply compensation, it doesn’t retroactively change your repayment history or create any negative marker. Your original agreement, assuming you kept up your payments, still shows as settled or up to date exactly as it did before.
The one scenario worth flagging is if your claim relates to an agreement you’re still actively repaying. In rare cases, a successful complaint could adjust the outstanding balance or terms of a live agreement, but this would be managed directly between you and the lender, and it’s a correction, not a default or a missed payment. It’s worth noting too that multiple credit applications for new car finance, separate from any claim you’re pursuing, can affect your score if lenders run hard searches. That’s a normal lending mechanic rather than anything connected to your discretionary commission complaint, and understanding how those inquiries work is useful background if you’re planning to finance another vehicle while your claim is ongoing.
Reading through old finance paperwork trying to spot commission clauses isn’t how anyone wants to spend an evening. Makeapcpclaim gives you a faster route: run the free 60-second finder, and if your agreement looks eligible, we refer you straight to a partner law firm who takes the claim from there.
The flow is simple. You enter a few basic details, no car registration, no lender logins, no uploaded documents. Within a minute, you’ll know whether your agreement shows signs of a discretionary commission arrangement or related mis-selling. If it does, your case gets passed to one of our partner law firms, who handle the complaint and any escalation to the Financial Ombudsman Service on your behalf.
On cost: you never pay Makeapcpclaim anything. Our partner law firms pay us a referral fee when they take on an eligible case, not you. There’s no catch buried in that arrangement, it’s simply how the service is funded.
If you’d rather skip the DIY paperwork hunt entirely, start with the free car finance agreement checker and see where you stand in under a minute.
People tend to overthink this. They assume that because their paperwork doesn’t say “discretionary commission arrangement” in bold letters, they must be in the clear, or they assume the opposite, that every car finance deal from the last two decades is automatically a claim. Neither is true. The honest position is that eligibility depends on specifics most people can’t judge from memory alone: how your rate was set, what your dealer earned, and whether that was disclosed.
What I’d push back on is the idea that this requires weeks of research before you take any action. It doesn’t. The regulatory framework here, the FCA’s rules, the ombudsman’s guidance, exists precisely because assessing fairness case by case is hard even for the industry itself. That’s not a reason to sit on your hands. It’s a reason to get your specific agreement checked rather than guessing based on articles like this one.
Run the free finder, see what comes back, and go from there.
— Jake
This article is general information, not a substitute for advice from a qualified financial advisor. Consult a qualified financial professional about your own circumstances before acting on anything here.