As banks and building societies close their doors to all but the least 'risky' borrowers, Dispatches reporter Jane Moore investigates a highly lucrative financial industry that has stepped in to provide loans to the millions of people denied credit elsewhere.
She discovers that many of the loans offered by some of these doorstep operators, payday lenders, and rent-to-buy companies come with sky-high interest rates that can financially overwhelm families already steeped in debt. And the sting in the tail is that these loans are entirely legal.
The programme asks why the Government has resisted calls to impose interest rate 'caps' on the various loans on offer, allowing the market to be so under-regulated that foreign loan companies are switching their operations to Britain.
In the run-up to Christmas, the impact of these high interest rate charges can be financially devastating for some families.
