Oakbrook Finance Limited · DRN-6199045

The complaint Oakbrook Finance Limited, trading as Likely Loans, provided Mr W with a £5,000 loan in January 2021. Mr W says that Likely Loans lent to him irresponsibly. What happened The details of this complaint are well-known to both parties, so I won’t repeat them again here. The facts aren’t in dispute, so I’ll focus on giving the reasons for my decision. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. We’ve set out our general approach to complaints about unaffordable or irresponsible lending on our website, and I’ve taken this into account in deciding Mr W’s case. I’ve decided the credit was provided fairly because: • Mr W applied to Likely Loans for a loan and he declared that he was employed with an annual income of £29,000, which it verified using information from a credit reference agency, and it calculated that his net monthly income would be about £1,939. • Likely Loans also made a search of Mr W’s credit file and it says that it completed an affordability assessment based on information that it obtained from the Office for National Statistics and information provided by Mr W to assure itself that he could afford the loan and the repayments would be sustainable. • I think the checks Likely Loans did before providing the loan were reasonable and proportionate given the amount of the loan and what it knew about Mr W’s financial situation. • Likely Loans’ checks showed that Mr W had unsecured debt of £13,719, including unsecured loans of £10,699, and that he was paying £445.50 each month for his existing credit commitments, but there was no other adverse information on his credit file. • Mr W had declared that he was living with his parents and Likely Loans’ affordability assessment showed that after deducting his housing costs, living expenses, payments for his existing credit commitments and the monthly payment for the loan that it was providing him, Mr W would have a remaining disposable income of £373.53. • Based on the information Likely Loans gathered and what it knew about Mr W’s circumstances, there was nothing to suggest Mr W was likely to be unable to sustainably repay what he was being lent. • Mr W says that Likely Loans approved the loan without fully understanding whether it was genuinely affordable for him and he’d taken a high-interest £9,000 consolidation

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loan six months earlier and in total had around £13,000 of outstanding debt, but Likely Loans took account of that debt in its lending decision and its affordability assessment showed that he could sustainably afford a loan with a monthly repayment of £269.10. • Mr W made five loan repayments to Likely Loans and it says that it was contacted about a debt management plan and agreed to accept the offered monthly payment of £187.56, which it received for seven months, and the loan was included in a sale to a third party in May 2022. • I don’t think Likely Loan acted unfairly in any other way. This means I don’t think Likely Loans did anything wrong when it provided the loan to Mr W. I’ve also considered whether the relationship might have been unfair under section 140A of the Consumer Credit Act 1974. However, for the reasons I’ve already given, I don’t think Likely Loans lent irresponsibly to Mr W or otherwise treated him unfairly. I haven’t seen anything to suggest that section 140A or anything else would, given the facts of this complaint, lead to a different outcome here. I know this isn’t the outcome Mr W hoped for. But for the reasons above, I’m not asking Likely Loans to do anything to put things right. My final decision My final decision is that I’m not upholding Mr W’s complaint about Likely Loans. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr W to accept or reject my decision before 20 April 2026. Jarrod Hastings Ombudsman

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