HFC Bank was originally an American bank (Household Finance Corporation) that specialised in sub-prime lending. It began operations in the UK in the 1970s and began defrauding consumers with illegal charges. The bank handled the store accounts for Dixons, Currys, PC World, B&Q etc as well as making personal loans in its own name and that of Beneficial Finance.

The bank was fined over £1m for mis-selling PPI.

HFC was bought by HSBC in 2003 and they took over the John Lewis store accounts as John Lewis Financial Services Limited. HSBC carried on the tradition of applying illegal charges to accounts in default, through Weightmans and Restons. I had acted for John Lewis for over 20 years and was sacked for reporting Weightmans to the Law Society. I told the bank’s solicitor Duncan Hamilton in 2003 that the charges were illegal but they carried on until 2010 when the OFT told them to stop.

Some judges were wise to the charges and refused to allow them, but most often the judgments were by  default  which means they were literally rubber stamped.

HFC no longer exists as a bank. HSBC surrendered their banking licence prior to April 2014, when the FCA took over regulation of consumer credit from the OFT and assumed the new power to order redress. This means that HFC cannot be ordered to compensate fraud victims because they were are longer regulated.

Besides the fraud the bank was involved in all manner of lies and false accounting.

See here for details of the corrupt appointment of an HSBC director to head the BBC, here for my dealings with the media and here for those who have directly benefited from the cover-ups.