This was an appeal from the First-tier Tribunal (FTT ) to the Upper Tribunal by the appellant against its decision that loan administration services supplied by the appellant to a UK bank, Shawbrook Bank Limited (‘Shawbrook’), were standard-rated supplies of debt collection services rather than exempt ones as claimed by the appellant. 

In brief, the appellant’s contractual arrangements with Shawbrook related to four categories of loans provided by Shawbrook to customers in the course of its lending business. The appellant’s description of its supplies was “loan account administration services”. In essence, the services that the appellant provided covered the entire lifecycle of the loans covered by the arrangements, apart from the making of the initial loan or any further advance. The appellant established loan accounts using its own systems, communicated with borrowers as an