Customer demand fuels positive results at credit provider

Unsecured consumer credit provider, International Personal Finance (IPF), has achieved pre-tax profits of £33.8m (H1 2021: £43.3m) in the six months ending 30 June 2022.

The Leeds-based business’s underlying first-half profit before tax grew by 45%, after excluding Covid-19 impairment provision releases in H1 2021 of £20m.

Gerard Ryan, chief executive officer at IPF, said: “We delivered strong growth and a very good financial performance across the Group in the first half of the year.

“I am pleased to report a 45% growth in underlying profit before tax, with all of our businesses being profitable in the period.

“We continued to successfully execute our growth strategy and have attracted more customers, increased customer lending in all of our divisions and maintained our focus on excellent credit quality.

“Whilst the external landscape has become more challenging due to global inflationary pressure and the uncertainties caused by the war in Ukraine, we saw a steady improvement in demand over the course of the second quarter which has continued into the third quarter.”

IPF adds that its customer lending increased by 14%, driven by improving demand, while it also reports customer number growth of 2% to 1.72m clients.

The business says it has headroom on funding facilities of £68m, which supports the Group’s growth plans into quarter four 2023.

IPF states: “We believe we have managed the impact of the pandemic better than most of our competitors through our strong focus on our colleagues, our loyal customers and cashflow management.

“Whilst we have seen some market rationalisation amongst our competitors, the main incumbents remain broadly the same with marketing spend moving back to pre-Covid-19 levels.

“We have seen very few new entrants trying to serve our segments.”

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