Payday lender Sunny goes into administration

KPMG has been appointed as administrators of Elevate Credit International Limited, which offered loans under the Sunny brand, and previously as 1 Month Loan and Quid. It has said it will conduct an "orderly wind down of the business".

Sunny had around 50,000 customers on its loan books and offered short-term loans of between £100 and £2,500.

KPMG says Sunny customers will still need to carry on repaying their loans in the usual way.

Sunny is the latest in a long list of collapsed loan providers – payday loan giant Wonga folded in 2018, followed by providers such as QuickQuid, 247Moneybox, PiggyBank and WageDay Advance.

Been mis-sold a loan? See our Reclaim payday loans for free guide.

I've an outstanding Sunny loan – what should I do?

If you have an outstanding loan, the administrators say you must carry on paying it back in the usual way – and that includes if you make repayments through a debt management company.

Your loan will continue to accrue interest until it's repaid, and you'll be bound by the same T&Cs you agreed to when you took it out.

If you're struggling to repay your loan, you should contact the Sunny customer service team by emailing help@sunny.co.uk or phoning 0800 7315 444 – it still has staff, overseen by KPMG, to handle customer queries.

If you're having repayment issues as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, you may be able to arrange a payment holiday, reduce your payments or extend your loan term so you have longer to repay – what you're offered will depend on your individual circumstances.

Don't take out further loans to make your repayments to Sunny. If you're struggling and unsure what to do, you can contact the National Debtline for free on 0808 808 4000 (phone lines are open Monday-Friday 9am-8pm). Also see our Debt Problems guide.

For general info on help available to those who are struggling financially at the moment – including payment holidays for mortgages, loans, credit cards and more – see our Coronavirus Finance & Bills Help guide.

I was mis-sold a loan – can I still claim?

If you think you were mis-sold a loan, you can still submit a complaint – though it's best to do so as soon as possible. You can do this by emailing help@sunny.co.uk or writing to Customer Relations, Elevate Credit International Limited, Blenheim House, Newmarket Road, Bury St Edmunds, IP33 3SB. For help on what to include, see our free payday loan reclaim template letter.

KPMG says it will also invite customers to make a claim in future once it has calculated whether there is enough money to pay customers.

If you'd already made a complaint before Sunny collapsed, it will be passed on to the administrators. KPMG says you'll be contacted in future if there are any further steps to progress your claim, but you don't need to do anything at the moment.

However, it's important to understand that any outstanding or new claims will be treated as 'unsecured creditor claims' – even if you've already had an offer of redress and this hasn't yet been paid.

Unfortunately, that means you'll likely be in a long queue of other claimants, and will be unlikely to receive the full amount of your claim. In the past, customers who were mis-sold payday loans by lenders which later collapsed have received just a fraction of the compensation they were owed.

For more help on reclaiming payday loans, see our Reclaim payday loans for free guide – though we've removed Sunny from the reclaim tool now it's in administration, so you'll instead need to follow the steps above.