Business
COVID-19 and Dividend Update
COVID-19 and Dividend Update.
About this update from Vanquis Banking Group Plc
[{"type":"text","content":"\n \n \n RNS Number : 7916H\n Provident Financial PLC\n 27 March 2020\n \n \n \n \n This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No 596/2014\n \n \n Provident Financial plc\n \n \n COVID-19 and dividend update\n \n \n The UK and global economies are currently experiencing unprecedented uncertainty as a result of COVID-19. \n \n \n The group's immediate priority has been on safeguarding the health and wellbeing of our colleagues and customers. Significant steps have already been taken in this regard in line with Government guidance and policy. These include working from home for a significant proportion of colleagues throughout the group; encouraging more customers to make remote payments through the internet, apps or via telephone; and introducing technology to allow some contact centre colleagues to work from home whilst maintaining telephone contact with customers. \n \n \n In our home credit business, we have introduced a temporary pause on face-to-face visits given the Government's recent measures. Customer Experience Managers (CEMs) are maintaining the customer relationship through phone, SMS and online to support customers and encourage repayment through other mechanisms including the web, card payments via the CEM, contact centre or post office. Prior to the Government's recent social distancing measures, approximately 25% of weekly collections were through non-cash methods. In addition, we are introducing remote lending capability for CEMs and electronic disbursement of loans for home credit customers. We have also accelerated the roll out of Provident Direct to increase repayment optionality for customers.\n \n \n In the first eleven weeks of 2020, there was no discernible impact of COVID-19 on credit issued, credit quality or collections. However, we continue to assess the impact on our business from the measures recently announced by the UK Government, together with our own actions on forbearance where we help customers in difficulty to manage their repayments over an extended time frame. We expect both our credit issued and collections performance to be adversely impacted during this period of uncertainty. It is too early to quantify the potential financial impact of COVID-19 on the group's financial performance and, therefore, we consider ...