Whether money was paid in reduction of principal owing under a loan agreement
Quick Take
1A contractual term providing that payments 'will be credited to the Borrower only when actually received by the Lender' is properly construed as a temporal stipulation governing when payments are credited, not as a substantive bar requiring personal receipt by the lender that would exclude receipt by an authorised agent.
2Where a finance broker's activities extend well beyond typical brokerage — including collecting interest payments, issuing default notices, and administering the loan on the lender's instructions — an agency relationship with the lender may be established, but the scope of that agency is determined by the actual instructions given and does not automatically extend to consenting to early part-repayment of principal where the loan agreement requires the lender's consent.
3Where a party's claim of repayment is contradicted by that party's own subsequent conduct — including paying interest calculated on the full unreduced principal over multiple periods without contemporaneous protest — the court will prefer the inference drawn from the documentary record and known facts over oral testimony of repayment, applying the Gestmin approach to commercial litigation.
