12.1 million UK drivers can claim back £829 on average. They've got 12 months to do it.
PS26/3, sorted before the CMCs skim
Executive Summary
In a nutshell
An end-to-end web tool that walks UK consumers through the FCA Motor Finance Consumer Redress Scheme (PS26/3, published 30 March 2026). The user enters every car-finance agreement they have held since 6 April 2007 (PCP, HP, Conditional Sale; multiple agreements aggregated in one place), the tool models each agreement against the scheme's bifurcated rules, classifies it as Johnson-tier (≥50% commission and ≥22.5% loan, full commission plus interest) or scheme-tier (hybrid remedy, average ~£830 per agreement), tracks the lender's expected contact date based on Scheme 1 vs Scheme 2 phasing, generates a per-agreement complaint letter where the lender has not written first, and reviews any received offer letter against an FCA-aligned counter-offer template. Sold as £19 Eligibility Pack, £49 Multi-Agreement Pack, £29 Counter-Offer Review, £9.99/mo Reform Watch. The window is brutal but real: most payouts land between June 2026 and January 2027, and the next 12 months are when 12.1 million people need help.
The Story
Meet the user
Dan drove HGVs for a logistics outfit in Doncaster for fifteen years. Between 2009 and 2022 he financed three cars on PCP and one on HP, mostly through whichever dealer his then-partner happened to walk into. Last week a letter from Black Horse landed on his mat offering him £412 in "redress" against a 2018 Audi A3 deal. He has no idea if that is fair, generous, or insulting. His brother-in-law had four agreements over the same period and is being told by a TikTok claims firm that he is owed "up to £4,200 if you sign on the dotted line, we only take 36%". Dan has tried the MoneySavingExpert tool, which is excellent but generic, and the Equifax checker, which lists his agreements but pointedly refuses to tell him what any of them is worth. He spends two evenings on it, calculator in one hand, lender letter in the other, and gets nowhere.
Then he finds Redress Navigator through a Reddit thread. He punches in all four agreement numbers (it cross-checks against his Equifax export to make sure none is missed), and within ninety seconds he has: a per-agreement classification (one Johnson-tier, three scheme-tier), an estimated total of £2,140 across the four, a draft proactive complaint for the two lenders that have gone quiet, and a counter-offer letter for the Black Horse deal arguing it is £180 short under the FCA's own 17% interest-reduction methodology. £49 for the Multi-Agreement Pack, another £29 for the Counter-Offer Review. Total spend: £78. Total skim from a CMC at the same outcome: £770 plus VAT.
Scores
How does this idea stack up?
7.7/10
12.1M eligible agreements, £7.5bn redress pool, 22,420+ monthly UK searches across the cluster, no scheme-aware multi-agreement tool exists today.
CPCs of £12-£36 prove buyer intent, claims firms charge 18-36% (inc VAT), people are confused by phasing, hybrid-remedy maths and offer-letter validity.
Standard web stack and Stripe; the only complexity is encoding the FCA's bifurcated calculation rules (17% reduction post-2014, 21% pre-2014, plus 3% floor interest).
PS26/3 was published 30 March 2026; search volume for "motor finance redress scheme" jumped from 30 to 1,900 in a single month; the consumer opt-in window is six months from each lender's invite.
Scheme 2 payouts complete by November 2026, Scheme 1 by January 2027; the bulk of demand evaporates within 12 months. Reform Watch subscription is a partial hedge, not a full one.
Solo-buildable in 4-6 weeks, sub-£1k startup, but trust-building in a legal-adjacent product needs deliberate content investment.
Strongest
Timing
A once-per-decade regulatory event with a published timetable and a search-volume spike that confirms public attention.
Watch out
Durability
The scheme is explicitly time-bound. Plan for an 18-month operating window and either a hard exit or a pivot into adjacent consumer-redress categories (e.g. unaffordable lending, packaged bank accounts, future PPI-class events).
Pain Point
The problem
“Reddit threads show users reporting lenders confirming mis-selling or logging cases, yet holding decisions until regulators finish the scheme, with multiple threads saying not to expect quick payouts.”
— Paraphrased from r/UKPersonalFinance discussions summarised by national-claims.co.uk
Confusion about whether you are even eligible. 12.1 million agreements are in scope but 4.7 million more were excluded from PS26/3 entirely. Equifax tells you what agreements you had, MoneySavingExpert tells you whether to complain, but no one tells you per-agreement whether you are likely owed anything and roughly how much.
Confusion about which scheme you are in. Pre-April 2014 agreements sit in Scheme 1 (deadline 31 August 2026, payouts by January 2027). Post-April 2014 agreements sit in Scheme 2 (deadline 30 June 2026, payouts by November 2026). People with multiple agreements over the period straddle both. The FCA's own materials are written for compliance officers, not consumers.
Confusion about the offer letter. The hybrid remedy averages "estimated loss" with "commission paid", then adds 3%-floor compensatory interest. Almost no consumer can sanity-check whether the lender's number is right. Consumer Voice has already announced it will challenge the FCA's methodology as systematically undercompensating drivers.
Predatory CMCs. Slater & Gordon, Reclaim247, Barings Law, ClaimExperts and dozens of smaller outfits all charge 18-36% inc VAT of any payout. The FCA itself recommends consumers "complain directly to lenders without using a claims management company". The DIY tooling that exists is either thin (Equifax) or generic (MoneySavingExpert).
Multi-agreement anxiety. Industry data suggests an average of 2 finance agreements per affected consumer (so ~£1,658 typical aggregate). The current free tools are single-agreement at a time and require the user to do the bookkeeping themselves.
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