WHY DO OUTSTANDING BALANCES ON THE STATEMENT FROM MY PDA AND CREDITORS DIFFER?
I have received a lot of enquiries from our existing clients under debt review asking this question. Maybe you have also come across this as well and need some answers.
Balances on statements that the debt counsellor issues which he/ she gets from the Payments Distribution Agency (PDA) are estimates. First and foremost, the account information that the debt counsellor (DC) captures on the PDA system has to be correct. Otherwise, the balances would differ. Furthermore, the balances differ because payments are processed by the PDA and the credit providers at different times. Credit providers apply payments to your account a few days after payments are made from the PDA and this affects the interest calculated on the account resulting in differences in the outstanding balance.
It is possible that the credit providers may also be adding charges that the PDA is not aware of and may need to be manually added or removed. Therefore, the balances on PDA statements should be taken as estimates. The debt counsellor has to call the credit provider to get the latest balances and update the system balances regularly. You can have up to 3 months of payment differences and this is normal. At Simunye Debt Advisory we undertake to call credit providers and update balances every 6 months. This has several advantages for our clients as the balances are current and we can prioritise accounts with the lowest balances to be paid first in cases where the client has additional finances to pay more. This allows our clients to have a game plan and quicker debt review exit.
In terms of debt review guidelines, it should be noted that the debt counsellor does not pay the credit providers neither is he/she allowed to receive any money from consumers directly from the consumer. The debt counsellor uses a PDA (e.g Hyphen, DC Partner) and instructs the PDA which credit provider to pay and how much. The PDA statement shows how this distribution between the various stakeholders was done.
If you want to know the balances on your accounts under debt review, please feel free to contact our consultants by completing your details for a quick and free call back. Our consultants will contact your credit providers on your behalf.
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