Key facts
Provident Personal Credit stopped lending on 10 May 2021. The Scheme of Arrangement was approved by the High Court on 4 August 2021. The summary below records the firm's 140-year history at high level and the key Scheme outcomes.
Operating entity: Provident Personal Credit Limited (PPC). The Scheme of Arrangement was funded by a £50 million contribution from the parent group. Loans were written off on 31 December 2021 except where they had previously been sold to a third-party debt purchaser. Source: FCA news statement; Debt Camel record of the Provident Scheme.
Timeline
Provident's UK history is one of the longest in any consumer credit firm covered by this directory. The closure-relevant timeline focuses on the events from 2018 onwards, with earlier history compressed into a single founding entry.
Provident founded
Joshua Kelley Waddilove establishes the Provident Clothing and Supply Company in Bradford, Yorkshire. The original product is a voucher repaid in weekly instalments, used to buy clothing from approved retailers. The voucher business evolves over the following century into a cash home-collected loan product.
Growth as the UK's largest home-credit lender
Provident becomes the UK's largest home-collected credit business through the twentieth century. The agent network at peak exceeds 7,000 self-employed agents collecting from approximately 2.4 million customers. The model becomes the dominant UK doorstep-lending franchise.
FCA assumes consumer credit oversight
The Financial Conduct Authority takes over consumer credit regulation from the Office of Fair Trading. PPC transitions to FCA authorisation. Affordability assessment standards under the FCA Consumer Credit sourcebook (CONC) apply to all new lending.
Operational restructuring fails
Parent Provident Financial Group attempts to convert the agent base from self-employed to employed. The change is operationally chaotic and triggers a sharp drop in collections. The restructuring is partially reversed but customer relationships and business performance are damaged.
Affordability complaints rise sharply
Affordability complaint volumes against PPC accelerate. The Financial Ombudsman Service upholds a high proportion of complaints. The redress provision rises substantially across successive accounting periods.
Lending stops
PPC announces on 10 May 2021 that it will cease all new lending. The home-collected credit operation is being wound down. Existing customer accounts continue to be collected but no new advances are made.
Scheme of Arrangement proposed
The Provident Financial Group proposes a Scheme of Arrangement to cap and distribute redress liability. The proposal includes a £50 million contribution from the parent group, ringfenced from the rest of the group's ongoing businesses, to fund customer redress.
Scheme approved
The High Court sanctions the Scheme of Arrangement on 4 August 2021, with the Scheme effective from 5 August 2021. The £50 million trust account is established to ring-fence funds for redress. Claim notification deadlines are set for early 2022.
Loans written off
All outstanding PPC loans are written off on 31 December 2021, except where they had previously been sold to a third-party debt purchaser. The write-off applies to home-collected, payday (Satsuma), guarantor (Glo) and home credit (Greenwood) products covered by the Scheme.
Claim notification deadline
The deadline for claimants to submit affordability complaints to the Scheme administrator is 28 February 2022. Claims received after this date are not assessed.
Final dividend paid
Distributions of approximately 5 to 10 pence in the pound on agreed claim amounts are paid to upheld claimants through 2022. The exact percentage varies between cohorts depending on when the claim was filed and the basis on which it was upheld.
PPC wound down, broader group continues
PPC is wound down. The wider Provident Financial Group continues to trade through Vanquis Bank credit cards and Moneybarn vehicle finance. Neither of these businesses was part of the home-credit wind-down. Vanquis Bank Limited and Moneybarn No. 1 Limited remain separately FCA authorised.
What went wrong
Provident's wind-down is the largest UK home-credit closure in the post-FCA era. The firm did not fail because of a single decision but because the home-collected credit business model became commercially incompatible with modern affordability assessment standards. The complaints pattern resembles those seen across the wider UK doorstep-lending sector and the online payday loan market, where models built on agent or operator judgment ran into the new evidential standards.
Home-collected credit relied on agent judgment that the FCA framework no longer recognised
The home-collected credit model that PPC pioneered relied on the agent's personal knowledge of the customer's circumstances. The agent visited the customer's home weekly, knew the household, observed when circumstances were strained or improving and exercised discretion over how to handle missed payments. Under the FCA Consumer Credit sourcebook from 2014 onwards, this informal approach to affordability assessment was no longer sufficient. Lenders had to demonstrate documented evidence of affordability assessment. That evidence then had to be reviewable by the Financial Ombudsman Service. Affordability complaints against home-collected credit accounts written under agent-judgment underwriting were upheld at high rates, since the documentary evidence was absent or insufficient. The structural mismatch between the model and the regulatory framework was the underlying cause of the wind-down.
The 2017 restructuring damaged collections and customer relationships
Parent Provident Financial Group's 2017 attempt to convert the agent base from self-employed to employed was operationally chaotic. The change triggered a sharp drop in collections and damaged customer relationships that had been built up over years or decades. The reversal was partial. By 2018 the operation was running below pre-restructuring efficiency, with reduced customer goodwill and weaker collections performance.
Affordability complaint volumes were larger than the wind-down economics could absorb
Approximately 2.4 million customers had been served by PPC at peak. The Financial Ombudsman Service uphold rate against PPC affordability complaints was high. The combined effect was a redress liability that exceeded what the operating business could sustain. Without the £50 million shareholder contribution from the parent group, the dividend outcome would have been substantially lower than the 5 to 10 pence ultimately paid.
If you had a Provident loan
The Provident Scheme of Arrangement is now closed. Final distributions were paid through 2022 and the loan write-off occurred on 31 December 2021. The reference summary below covers what former Provident customers should expect in 2026.
Successful affordability claimants
Claimants whose affordability complaints were upheld within the 28 February 2022 notification window received approximately 5 to 10 pence in the pound on agreed claim amounts. Distributions started in 2022. The exact percentage varied between claimant cohorts. No further dividend will be paid through the Provident Scheme.
Outstanding home-collected loan balances
All outstanding PPC home-collected loan balances were written off on 31 December 2021. This applies whether or not the borrower had submitted an affordability claim. The exception is loans, including small-balance accounts originally taken out by borrowers seeking bad credit payday loans equivalents, that had been sold to a third-party debt purchaser before the Scheme was implemented. Those loans remain owed to the new debt owner. Borrowers receiving collection contact in the Provident name in 2026 should request the original credit agreement and a copy of the deed of assignment before paying anything.
Customers who did not submit a claim
The Scheme claim window closed on 28 February 2022. The Financial Ombudsman Service is unable to consider new complaints against PPC because the Scheme is now in force and the entity is wound down. There is no further redress route specifically against PPC. Anyone who would previously have used Provident for an unexpected household cost can now apply for a same-day loan from an active FCA-authorised lender if the need is urgent.
If you are in current financial difficulty
The four bodies below provide free, impartial guidance to former home-credit borrowers and other consumer credit customers. None of them charge. None have any commercial relationship with a lender, broker or claims management firm. Each can advise on disputed historical balances. Each can also advise on dealing with a debt purchaser holding a legacy Provident account.
The regulatory legacy
Provident's wind-down marked the effective end of UK home-collected credit at scale. The combination of PPC closing in 2021 and Morses Club closing in 2023-2024 left the doorstep-lending category without a major operator. The 140-year history of home-credit in the UK ended in less than three years.
The end of mainstream UK home-collected credit
With both PPC and Morses Club closed by 2024, the mainstream UK home-collected credit category no longer has a major operator. The residual market consists of much smaller regional operators and community lenders. Borrowers who would previously have used home-collected credit now typically access short-term credit through online direct lenders within the FCA price cap framework. Credit unions provide the alternative route for community-based lending.
The Provident Financial Group and Vanquis Bank
The wider Provident Financial Group continues to trade through Vanquis Bank credit cards and Moneybarn vehicle finance. Neither of these businesses was part of the home-credit wind-down. Vanquis Bank Limited and Moneybarn No. 1 Limited operate under separate FCA authorisations and have separate Companies House records. The PPC wind-down does not affect customers of these continuing operations.
The post-home-credit market for former Provident customers
The home-collected category itself no longer exists in the UK at meaningful scale. Former Provident customers needing short-term credit can use a single soft-search application to receive offers from active FCA-authorised firms, including those that fund a small short-term advance through online small loans rather than weekly home visits.
Where former Provident home-credit customers borrow now.
Three FCA-authorised firms covering the short-term credit tier that former Provident customers may now consider. None operate the home-collected lending model that Provident pioneered. All operate within the FCA price cap framework.
Direct lender for fixed-term short-term loans of £50 to £1,500 over up to 6 months. GAIN Credit LLC, FCA authorised since 2008. Online application replaces the doorstep visit.
Direct lender for short-term loans of £100 to £1,100 at 0.8 percent daily within the FCA price cap. Western Circle Limited, FCA authorised since 2014. UK-only operating focus.
Membership-based lender offering fixed-fee borrowing rather than interest-bearing credit. Useful where predictable cost matters more than maximum loan size. Inclusive Finance Limited, FCA authorised since 2017.
Sources and verification
Lending cessation date of 10 May 2021, the Scheme of Arrangement approval on 4 August 2021 and the Scheme effective date of 5 August 2021 verified against the FCA news statement and the High Court sanction order published in the London Gazette.
The £50 million shareholder contribution from the parent Provident Financial Group, the 28 February 2022 claim notification deadline and the 5 to 10 pence in the pound dividend range verified against contemporaneous Debt Camel coverage of the Scheme.
Loan write-off on 31 December 2021 and the exception for loans previously sold to debt purchasers verified against the Scheme administrator's communications and the published Scheme document.
Companies House records for Provident Personal Credit Limited and the separate active filing status of Vanquis Bank Limited and Moneybarn No. 1 Limited verified on 28 April 2026.
The Satsuma Loans, Glo guarantor and Greenwood home credit brands operating under the same Provident Personal Credit entity and covered by the same Scheme verified against the original Scheme document and contemporaneous trade press.
Swift Money Limited is a credit broker, not a lender. This page is an editorial record published by Swift Money. Inclusion does not imply commercial relationship between Swift Money and any entity that operated under the Provident brand or within the Provident Financial Group. We are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, FRN 738569.