Car lenders press the FCA to open the model behind its £9.1bn motor finance scheme

The lenders say the withholding extends to the Upper Tribunal. They also say it covers the workings of the complex economic modelling the regulator relies on to justify the scheme ^[6]. Lawyers for Volkswagen Financial Services said the FCA might have been expected to welcome scrutiny "such that lenders and consumers alike could be satisfied that its schemes are lawful and properly grounded" ^[7]. Its actual position, they said, "is quite extraordinary, and unjustified" ^[8].

The FCA's counsel answered with a charge of opportunism ^[10]. "The overall impression created by the totality of these disclosure requests is that Volkswagen and CAAF are simply hoping something will turn up," counsel said ^[10]. That objection is stronger against a trawl through the regulator's files than against a request for the inputs to a model the regulator itself cites as justification ^[6]. The report does not list every request or set out the lenders' other grounds, so we do not yet know whether disclosure is the centre of their case or one front among several.

The calibration matters because the figure has already moved once. The March revision is worth about £1.9bn to lenders, roughly 17% of the earlier £11bn estimate ^[18]. Consumer Voice attacks that calibration from the opposite side. Its filings say the FCA placed "excessive reliance on the interests of lenders", and they tie that reliance to the Treasury's growth agenda ^[2].

The government's answer is formal. "The FCA is operationally independent of government," a Treasury spokesperson said ^[13]. The regulator says every decision on the scheme was taken independently ^[16]. Consumer Voice still has history to point to. As Chancellor, Rachel Reeves sought to intervene in last year's Supreme Court case over concerns it would harm the sector, and the justices blocked her ^[14].

The regulator has to choose between defending the scheme on its own description and defending it on its numbers. Holding the code back asks the Upper Tribunal to accept the FCA's account of a model whose code, on the lenders' account, the tribunal has not seen ^[6]. Releasing it would let the firms that have to pay test the £9.1bn total, and the March cut inside it ^[4]. I think the disclosure ruling decides what the rest of the challenge is about. If the code is released, the next stage argues over the model's numbers. If it stays closed, the argument is over the regulator's account of them. For now the FCA is holding its position: "Our scheme is the quickest, fairest and most efficient way to compensate consumers and we are defending it robustly," a spokesperson said ^[17].