A tweet, retweeted by Martin Lewis, consumer campaigner and founder of Money Saving Expert, has reignited controversy concerning UCAS Media promotion of private loans to students.

An email sent by UCAS on 22nd August 2019 included promotions for Future Finance, a private loans company. It offers students loans with interest rates of between 8% and 23.7% higher than respective government offered loans, which are to be repaid whilst students are still at university.

The email was criticized by many including Save the Student, due to the lack of reference to Future Finance’s interest rates or the potential risks that can accompany private loans.

Future Finance has faced previous criticism about misleading advertising. Before the email was sent in 2019, a total of five complaints had been submitted to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) concerning the misleading nature of their ads.

At the time of the email, Lewis criticised UCAS for ‘breaching an ethical line,’ whilst arguing that it had ‘failed in its duty of care’ to students. Then, on 22nd January 2020, he retweeted a tweet by Gregor Deakin, a student at Liverpool Hope University, criticising a new email from UCAS, who were again promoting the private loans.

The tweet, which included a screenshot of an email from UCAS Media promoting Future Finance, read: ‘How is this highly unethical practice still being carried out by @ucas_online in which they send emails about extra non-government loans with high-interest rates trapping students in student debt whilst acting as a charity.’

Unlike the email in 2019, this email started with a disclaimer encouraging students to apply for a Maintenance Loan and seek financial advice from their universities before applying for a commercial loan.

UCAS have replied stating that they have reviewed the email to ‘ensure that the government loan is promoted over any other kind of finance,’ however ‘[they] like to make students aware of the alternatives.’

In a previous statement, UCAS said that students have to actively opt-in to receiving marketing material from outside companies, and it ‘carefully considers which companies to work with.’