Consumers responsible for their debt levels
Consumers themselves are ultimately responsible for recent rises in bankruptcy and IVA numbers, an industry expert has said.
Stephen Rose, the director of the Debt Advice Bureau, explained that it was always consumers themselves who made the decision to spend money and get themselves into ever increasing cycles of debt.
He said that "things like interest rate rises that we've had aren't in themselves a reason for why there's been such a rise in insolvencies.
"Rates would have to go a lot higher before that would filter through and be such a cause."
Mr Rose added: "At the end of the day, you're the one who's signing the application. You're the one that's using it, so you've got to make sure that you know what you're signing, you know what you're getting into."
In general, Mr Rose said that financial institutions provided information about the products they sell, but that "is a tendency for people to glaze over a little bit if you're bombarded with all the numbers and the stats and the facts on paperwork".
In the first quarter of the year, official figures show that there were 30,075 individual insolvencies in England and Wales as people took on more borrowing than they could repay.
Source: moneyhighstreet.com
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