Provident's Scheme of Arrangement has been approved in court. The court hearing was on 30 July 2021 and the decision has now been given. The Scheme was proposed because Provident could not afford to carry on paying full refunds to customers winning affordability complaints. The Financial Ombudsman was upholding 75% of complaints against Provident who often did not make proper affordability … [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 Scheme – the voting and approval process
UPDATE - the Scheme has now been approved by the court. See Provident Scheme – 4 million people can now claim a refund for how to make a claim and what will happen in the Scheme. Provident Financial Group (PFG 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 … [Read more...]
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 On 4 August 2021 the Scheme was approved in court. See Provident Scheme – 4 million people can now claim a refund to find out how it will work and how to make a claim. 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 to pay to … [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. UPDATE the Scheme was approved in August 2021. See Provident's Refund Scheme for how it works and how a customer can make a claim The £50m the company is putting up to pay refunds is not nearly enough to pay … [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...]