Alliance & Leicester's bad debts have increased to £105m from £74m in 2005 as Britain suffered astounding personal insolvencies. London 21 February 2007: A leading UK bank, Alliance and Leicester stated that there was an alarming increase in bad debts last year. All these bad debts claimed the bank have resulted from unsecured personal loans.
 
Richard Pym, Chief executive, Alliance and Leicester Bank, stated, “ Changes to our credit criteria have resulted in new loans written in 2006 being of higher quality than in 2005.We continue to believe that the proportion of loans in arrears is around its peak.” The fact that new unsecured loans fell to £2.3bn last year from £2.5bn in 2005 validates Richard's on record statement. 

The bank plans to focus on its plans for lending growth in the UK homeowner and commercial sectors in 2007 and hopes that it gets new borrowers have better paying capacity than the previous ones. Overall, the default in repaying has been recorded as 50% of the total loan market. The estimated market share of consumers' outstanding credit balances on personal loansin 2005 was nearly around 50%, as per the study conducted by a leading financial research site.