The group’s principal objective remains to increase our profitability in a prudent, sustainable, ethical manner. The reason for this is that our stakeholders (employees, shareholders, our introducing partners, other customers, creditors, regulators, other parts of government and the local and wider community) will all benefit from profit growth in the group.
We have two main financial strategies for doing this:
- to increase lending in a responsible manner. The directors still believe in our
two pronged approach to lending – to increase the number of partners who fit in with our business values as well as to increase the volume of business from each of these partners, while always having regard to the risks associated with lending and keeping fair treatment of customers at the heart of our business.
- to preserve and, where deemed necessary, increase our sources of liquidity (which we have done this year by the issue of a retail bond).
Our financial strategies are bolstered by our non-financial strategies:
- to differentiate our business from that of our competitors, by taking time to fully understand our introducing partners’ businesses, by being easily contactable by all our customers, by providing flexible funding arrangements, by reducing our partners costs and giving them regular training and assistance.
- to innovate by continuing to review markets and product lines which we believe fit our lending criteria - safe lending and sensible returns – and working to develop markets where we identify a potential need.
- to continually improve our IT systems, providing stability for our future business, the ability to increase lending in our core markets where IT system integration is required and to enable us to enter new markets.
- to support our excellent sales team in dealing with our partners, arranging prospect meetings and, where required, making use of senior personnel to help them close a deal.