Amigo Loans reports £27m loss and complaints cost of over £126m

On July 20 Amigo Loans published the financial results for the year ending 31 March 2020. In the past year, Amigo has seen a net loan book reduction of 9.1% to £643.1m and a statutory loss after tax of £27.2m. When compared to the year to March 2019, when Amigo reported a profit of £88.6m, the lender saw a negative swing of 130.7%.

Amigo saw a complaints cost of £126.8m and complaints provision of £117.5m. In 2019, the complaints cost was just £0.1m. Earlier this year, Amigo’s sale process was aborted just as the alternative lender faced a £35m complaint backlog. In a challenging period for the lender, it has also faced an FCA investigation into its assessments of creditworthiness among customers.

Roger Lovering, acting chair, said: “The last 12 months have been a challenging and difficult period, which is reflected in our results today. We have seen a substantial increase in the volume of complaints and this has led to us to make a significant provision, which resulted in an overall loss for the financial year.”

On the same day, Amigo announced Jonathan Roe has been appointed chairman. This is expected to be effective from August 1 2020, subject to Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) approval.

Roe has 25 years of experience advising public companies on major corporate transactions. He was recently non-executive chairman of Vanquis Bank for three and a half years. Roe will take over the chairmanship of the nomination committee at Amigo from the current acting chairman, Roger Lovering.

Roe said: “I am delighted to become Amigo’s new chairman. I do not underestimate the near term challenges that Amigo is facing and fully recognise the uncertainties that many of our customers are currently facing too.”