Following the news that a third of My Car Check finance checks highlight active finance agreements, parent company CDL looks at some of the pitfalls finance companies can fall into, and why you need to ensure you’re covered with all the major provenance checkers


Stockport-based CDL Vehicle Information Services (CDL VIS) has a number of brands including My Car Check and My Text Check, which it offers as part of its consumer vehicle provenance checks. Yet not all lenders have fully considered the implications of these options.

Case study

1st Stop Car Finance hadn’t until they recently had to foot the bill when a £12,000 Mini was sold to an innocent purchaser.

Managing director David Enright, previously managing director at Welcome Car Finance, explains: "We discovered to our cost an issue concerning vehicle data and cars purchased in the private marketplace. As a result, we started supplying data to CDL, as well as HPI, and I’d encourage all other finance companies to do the same. Our primary source is HPI but we didn’t know we had to insist they share the data with other suppliers. We were not aware CDL existed and HPI, which was aware, didn’t advise us.

"In the case of the Mini, the seller was a wrong ‘un and the buyer showed due diligence in conducting a check with My Car Check. That’s when it came to light that HPI was not always sharing its data with CDL, but by then it was too late. The finance company loses. The police weren’t remotely interested. The attitude is "you’re a finance company, you can take it".

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It was a shocking experience and I wrote to the director of HPI about it, but it claims the onus is on the finance company to advise HPI to share the information. Fine if you know they exist!

"In the trade, most people use HPI or Experian. The private market is different. By their nature, buyers there are looking to make a saving and the cheapest history check provider might not be the one you supply data to. In my view, it’s outrageous that the likes of Gumtree, eBay and Auto Trader don’t have an automatic provenance checking facility in place with a reputable history check supplier, but that is an aside. The lesson is this: CDL brands provide a high percentage of consumer checks, so any finance company which doesn’t register with CDL is being both naïve and foolish."

In 2013, Finance & Leasing Association members alone incurred £10m losses regarding vehicles that went missing, unpaid or both. This was up 18% on the previous year. According to official figures, UK vehicle criminality has been steadily falling since the 1990s. This isn’t the full picture. Many fraudulent car sales go unreported. It is often considered ‘a civil matter’ if a vehicle has been moved on unpaid.

UK vehicles are some of the highest specification in the world, making them prime targets for organised criminal gangs.
Roger Powell, head of CDL VIS, says: "Finance providers shouldn’t relax until their data is registered with all three members of the Motor Asset Registration Service – ourselves, HPI and Experian. Around two million consumers a year check with CDL, so if your data isn’t registered with us your assets are at risk.

Remember, you have to opt-in; data isn’t always shared automatically, so please do get in touch.

"Our new online Finance Asset Management System, which is currently in live testing and due for release very soon, will allow lenders to register their agreements with us in real time, as well as amend existing records.

This easy-to-use system has been developed in association with lenders to ensure it does exactly what you need it to do. We will also be able to manage ‘at risk’ vehicles, allowing you to track problem assets and gain feedback if these vehicles are checked."

A rise in conversion fraud

My Car Check’s call centre manager, Justin Powell, who is on the UK board of the International Association of Auto Theft Investigators, adds: "There are currently 36 million vehicles taxed and registered in the UK and a quarter of these will be subject to a finance agreement. On the whole, these agreements will be honoured, but we are seeing a rise in vehicles being offered for sale prior to the finance being cleared.

"In the first six months of 2015, 32% of vehicles we checked had finance marked against them. In such instances, we speak to the lender to confirm that the debt is not settled, that they own the vehicle under a secured agreement, and that they have not heard from the agreement holder requesting a final settlement figure.

"The information we provide has led to many successful recoveries, often through the Association of Chief Police Officers’ Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service. We recently helped to recover an Audi TT for MotoNovo and we could give a hundred other examples.
"This surely highlights that provenance agencies and lenders should be working more closely together to prevent so-called acceptable losses.

In law, there is a basic principle that a person who doesn’t own something cannot confer it on another. This is summed up by the Latin term ‘nemo dat quod non habet’ meaning ‘no one gives what he doesn’t have’. Just because sellers have the keys doesn’t mean they own the car."

Roger Powell
is head of CDL Vehicle Information Services