Morses Club goes digital to ensure it can continue lending

The Batley-based firm, the UK’s second biggest home credit lender, said revenue fell to £100m in the year to February 27.

Paul Smith, chief executive of Morses Club said: “The last 12 months have been truly transformative for Morses Club. The Covid-19 pandemic forced us to innovate and accelerate our digital strategy, reconfiguring our operating model to allow us to maintain customer contact and collection activity whilst generating new lending opportunities and transitioning towards being a more complete financial services provider.

“The group performed resiliently and profitably, despite not being able to lend to new HCC (home collected credit) customers for five months of the year.

"In HCC, we recommenced lending to existing customers just three weeks after lockdown was announced in March 2020."

Mr Smith said that 67 per cent of lending in the HCC division is now cashless and 80 per cent of cash is collected remotely.

"Despite the impact of the pandemic, we saw a significant increase in the quality of our lending, with impairment levels well below the guidance range," he added.

"The fact that customer satisfaction has increased to 98 per cent reflects our customers' positive experience of the new remote lending model. I am very proud and grateful to all of my colleagues for adapting so well and for maintaining our customer service levels, despite the significant changes in the marketplace."