Online tools fighting debt, sharks and Cigno

Growing demand for Consumer Action’s services, brought on by cost-of-living pressures, and the plethora of dodgy credit products constantly entering the market, means the organisation has to be innovative and creative to reach the maximum number people in need.

Back in 2016, Managing Lawyer, Philippa Heir, created a website called “Demand a Refund” that was very successful in generating letters to claim refunds for junk insurance. We sought to replicate that success, but this time using the online platform Josef to simplify and streamline the design process of creating the letter writing tools.

In 2022 CALC obtained a grant from ECSTRA to fund the creation of more digital tools, and this year Managing Lawyers, Catherine Miller and Lucas Rutten completed that project.

Cat and Lucas created letter writing tools to help people who have problems with debt collectors, credit card debt and predatory loans from notorious loan shark, Cigno.

By far the most used of these tools were the Cigno letter writing tools. In the 12 months since going live on 21 August 2023, the Cigno tools have generated 785 letters of demand seeking refunds of money paid to Cigno.

These tools have also assisted 69 Financial Counsellors and 632 consumers to make complaints to ASIC about Cigno’s misconduct. ASIC has since taken enforcement action against Cigno and related companies.

Lucas has also recently worked with students from the University of Melbourne to guide them in the creation of a Josef letter writing tool to generate letters of demand for consumer guarantee complaints.

“CALC primarily gives legal advice over the phone but there is a limitation to how many people you can reach in this way. But if you can transmit advice without the need for a phone call, there’s greater potential for access to justice. Historically fact sheets were used – but these are obviously very one-dimensional compared with no-code tools that can be built, which are highly interactive and user-specific” Lucas says.