Car finance company won't accept my NI bank details for direct debit

A

Aladdin

Registered User
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Hello, recently changed our car and the garage set up a new loan with a car finance company. I provided all relevant details to the garage inc bank account and signed a direct debit mandate etc, but now I'm getting aggressive phone messages from the car finance crowd saying my because my IBAN begins with GB and is based in NI (even tho I live in the Republic) my bank details are 'invalid' and delays on the first payment will impact my credit rating etc.

Was under the impression that any such issue should've been flagged by the garage/finance co before signing over everything? I don't want to have to change bank direct debit details at this stage as it's my primary current account, and would've thought this should be between the garage and the finance co rather than being snotty with me.
Any particular reason (they didn't give me one) why theres a direct debit issue with a GB IBAN? Thanks
 
Once you have an IBAN there shouldn't be an issue. One of my clients recently changed their bank to the UK and one of the insurance companies said they wouldn't be able to accept direct debits from a UK account. I told them to try first. It went through without a hitch.
 
Good to know, thanks. No idea if they have tried or not, they just seemed to go straight to leaving aggressive messages and asking me to make immediate payment with credit card which I felt was out of order.
 
They say they are still refusing the IBAN cos...Brexit. They had all my banking info before setting up the finance agreement so I've told the garage that the agreement doesn't work for me if finance co won't accept the details and I'll get finance myself elsewhere.
But now the garage wants me to settle directly with the finance company even though there'll obviously be related charges, fees and hassle. Can the garage insist on this, since agreement obviously doesn't suit/work but through no fault of mine?
 
Did they give you any more detail than that? That's BS.

There's a guy in my office who sells software to the UK and his business has been uninterrupted by Brexit and he has been able to maintain the direct debits all the way through. I bet they haven't even tried to run the direct debit through.
 
No one ever said Brexit would be painless - well apart from the Take Back Control and an Extra £ 350m for NHS mob
 
Aladdin said:
They say they are still refusing the IBAN cos...Brexit.
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IBAN's and cross border payments are facilitated by SEPA which was originally an EUR payments area but now covers 36 countries including UK - Brexit is irrelevant to it. IBAN's are used beyond the SEPA region - it's used by nearly 80 countries

I currently pay GBP to UK once or twice a month and use IBAN's.
 
The finance co won't give any details as to why not, or whether they've even tried to run the direct debit - it's just a stonewall no over the GB IBAN. And threats about my credit rating etc! To my mind, the agreement is null and void if they're refusing to work with what I provided in advance and since I haven't made any repayments - because they won't accept them. :mad: But still they are insisting on giving me a 'settlement figure' to get out of it now.
I'm livid!
 
The finance companies are as nice as pie to get you to sign on the dotted line and change completely afterwards. Purely a numbers game to them. They are definitely in the wrong on this one. Like EmmDee, I send money to the UK every month without any trouble and I have clients who pay pension contributions in Ireland from UK accounts.
 
I had a quick look at this again. There is a Brexit impact that they might not have prepared for. But it's the finance company's issue.

There are additional fields required on cross border SEPA DD messages to non-EEA countries, which apply to UK post Brexit. The message has to include your full name & address, which isn't required on messages within the EEA.

Seemingly UK banks are rejecting the requests with an 'address not found' type message if it's not complete. Some appear to continue processing existing DDs that were set up pre 2021, but not new ones.

The originator (the car finance company in your case) would have had to make changes to their system to include the extra details on the SEPA files.
 
Thanks so much - it seems there's nothing I can do to get them to accept the info, but do the garage now have the right to insist that it's up to me to sort it out? If the finance co won't work with me, then I want to do away with in-garage finance bit altogether and just pay the amount off my own bat. I don't see why I have to pay fees/charges - or potentially built-in interest!
 
About a month or so, since the issue came up when the first d/d payment was due.
 
Aladdin said:
About a month or so, since the issue came up when the first d/d payment was due.
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I'd say it's pretty clear from that timeline that they've attempted to collect the DD, and it's been rejected by your bank.

Out of interest, which bank is it with in the UK?

Aladdin said:
but do the garage now have the right to insist that it's up to me to sort it out?
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Possibly. It's a long long time since I worked in car finance, but it used to be structured that the garage was just facilitating some paperwork, but your relationship was with the finance company.
 
Perhaps the issue is more to do with the marketing of financial services cross border from the EU to the UK?

So rather than it being a simple “banking issue”, which I agree shouldn’t arise, a UK IBAN is indicative of a UK-based customer who the finance company shouldn’t be marketing financial services to?

“No UK IBANs” might be a response to that? I accept that someone could, in theory, be based here and only have a UK bank account. But that person would be an outlier and probably wouldn’t justify a workaround.
 
That's all very well but I'd OK'd all this with the garage beforehand and provided the finance person those same UK banking details when making the application/entering into the credit agreement. If that was going to be a problem, shouldn't the finance co have flagged it up before giving the go ahead rather than trying to make a song and dance about it now?
 
RedOnion said:
I'd say it's pretty clear from that timeline that they've attempted to collect the DD, and it's been rejected by your bank.

Out of interest, which bank is it with in the UK?
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It's AIB Northern Ireland or First Trust as they call themselves now.
 
Aladdin said:
finance co have flagged it up before giving the go ahead rather than trying to make a song and dance about it now?
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They probably didn't know it was an issue until they tried to collect it.

I wouldn't be shocked if a car finance house doesn't have any other GB accounts they're collecting DDs from so might not have known it would be an issue. Their payment processor would only have flagged it to them if they had active GB DDs last year.
 
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