Provident Financial Group (PFG) has proposed a Scheme of Arrangement to reduce the refunds it has to pay to customers given unaffordable loans through its Provident Personal Credit (PPC) subsidiary. There are three stages in getting a Scheme approved. Provident is now in the second stage - Voting: On 22 April 2021, the voting arrangements for the Scheme were approved by the court. From … [Read more...]
Articles about Provident
Provident Financial Group (PFG) specialises in bad credit lending in the UK. Founded in 1880, Provident is Britain's largest doorstep lender.
It also owns the Satsuma payday lending brand, the Vanquis credit card brand and the Moneybarn car finance brand.
Provident closes its doorstep loan operation after 140 years
On 10 May 2021, Provident Financial Group (PFG) announced that it was closing its home credit operation, also known as doorstep lending. Doorstep lending has been at the heart of Provident's business for most of its 140-year history. Agents would visit customers at home, giving loans and collecting weekly repayments. Now Provident says: In light of the changing industry and regulatory … [Read more...]
Provident’s Scheme to cap refunds – the background
UPDATE Customer voting is now live. See Provident Scheme to limit refunds - how to vote on it for details of the Scheme, the timetable, what you might get in the Scheme and how to vote on it. This article gives the background to the Scheme and what happened before voting started. In March 2021 Provident Financial Group (PFG) proposed a Scheme of Arrangement to reduce the refunds it has … [Read more...]
Provident’s Scheme – will customers get less than 2% ?
Provident is proposing a Scheme of Arrangement to limit the refunds it has to pay to customers making affordability complaints about provident doorstep lending and Satsuma payday loans. This article looks at how much customers might hope realistically to get back from the Scheme. Further reading: Provident’s Scheme to cap refunds gives the background to the proposed Scheme Provident … [Read more...]
Amigo & Provident complaints soar – new Ombudsman data
On 3 March 2021, the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) published two sets of statistics. quarterly data for October-December 2020 summarises the types of complaints FOS has received. half-year data shows which firms had the most complaints in July-December 2020 and how often FOS upheld the customers' cases. Caroline Wayman, the FOS CEO says: "Excluding PPI, new complaints are up by … [Read more...]
Lessons from Amigo & Provident – FOS needs to be faster
In administration, customers with complaints at the Financial Ombudsman (FOS) have them returned to the administrators to resolve. The same happens in a Scheme of Arrangement which has been proposed by Amigo in December 2020 and by Provident in March - there FOS complaints are returned to the Scheme to be determined. FOS said in January 2021 it had about 13,000 open Amigo cases and about 500 … [Read more...]
Provident complaints rise – but are its offers too low?
The Financial Ombudsman (FOS)'s latest quarterly statistics, published on 25 August 2020, highlighted a rise in the number of complaints received about some types of high cost credit. In the period April-June 2020, new complaints about home credit rose by 77% to 1,166. UPDATE in the second half of 2020, FOS was sent over 10,000 new Provident complaints! Provident is the major lender in the home … [Read more...]
Kerrigan v Elevate Credit – an “unfair relationship”
The judgment in the Kerrigan & others v Elevate Credit International Ltd was published on 5 August 2020. Elevate Credit International was a large UK payday lender, trading as Sunny. Kerrigan and the other eleven claimants were Sunny customers who had made affordability complaints to Sunny through a claims company. The claims company brought the case and selected six claimants; Sunny … [Read more...]
A takeover bid for Provident (PFG) by much smaller NSF
Non Standard Finance (NSF) made a surprise bid for the much larger Provident Financial Group (PFG) in February 2019. The bid was eventually withdrawn by NSF in June 2019. Every debt adviser will be familiar with "the Provvy" but it's interesting to take a look at the two companies and their respective brands - they cover most sorts of high cost, bad credit lending in the UK. NSF's … [Read more...]
FCA’s consultation on home-collected credit, catalogue credit & store cards
This article has my proposed responses to some of the FCA's questions in its Consultation on High Cost Credit 18/12. I'll be sending them in next week. (My comments on the two FCA questions with an earlier deadline are here: Introducing a cap on the cost of Rent To Own lenders such as Brighthouse.) Rent to own Q3: Do you agree with our proposals for a point of sale ban on extended … [Read more...]