Provident Financial reports “good progress” in recovery despite home credit struggles

Provident Financial, the Bradford-based subprime lender, has reported “further good progress”  for this year’s third-quarter as it still recovers from a disastrous 2017.

Last year, Provident Financial saw shares crash by 66% on in one day, wiping £1.7bn off the company’s market value. This led to the firm being relegated from the FTSE100 and the exit of its chief executive.

Two of its divisions are under FCA investigation and earlier this year it confirmed the crisis had led to a £120m loss for the firm.

However, the company is now seeing further progress in its ongoing recovery plan.

The company said that its subsidiary, Vanquis Bank, has seen new customer bookings of 103,000 in the third quarter. Customer numbers ended the third quarter at 1,795,000, 6.3% higher than last year.

In addition, there are now 850,000 registered users to Vanquis Bank’s new mobile app launched last year and the group-wide Provident Knowledge Universe (PKU) customer database is in the process of being rolled out.

Moneybarn also continues to recover as new business volumes for the third quarter showed year-on-year growth of 16% and customer numbers at the end of September stood at 59,000, up 22% on September 2017, despite tighter underwriting standards.

Moneybarn continues to work with the FCA in respect of the ongoing investigation into affordability, forbearance and termination options.

However, Provident noted that collections performance during the third quarter remained around 10% lower than historical levels. The home credit recovery plan is “substantially complete”, but active home credit customer numbers ended the third quarter at 449,000, down from 464,000 at June 2018.

The FCA authorisation process is expected to be concluded during the fourth quarter.

Malcolm Le May, Group Chief Executive, said: “I am pleased to report further good progress against the 2018 goals we set out at the start of the year. The implementation of the home credit operational recovery plan is substantially complete and the authorisation process close to conclusion.

“The ROP refund programme is progressing well and should be substantially completed in early 2019 and the dialogue with the FCA on their investigation at Moneybarn continues in a constructive manner.

“The growth and operating performance of Vanquis Bank and Moneybarn are both good and in line with management’s plans. The home credit business is still experiencing the drag on collections performance from those customers who were active during the poorly executed migration to the new operating model in the third quarter of 2017. Importantly, customers who have taken credit from us since then are performing in line with historic levels.

The group’s funding and capital positions are strong and I believe the group is well placed to achieve its strategic aim of being the leading provider of credit to the underserved sector. I would like to thank all my colleagues for their continued hard work towards achieving this objective.”

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