Vanquis Banking Group shares fell on Monday after the company warned that earnings would be “substantially lower” than market forecasts.
The Bradford-based company expects an adjusted return on tangible equity – net profit divided by shareholders’ equity – in the low single digits for the current financial year.
It follows the Financial Conduct Authority’s investigation into historic car finance commission schemes.
Although not a subject of the FCA investigation, the company noted that administration costs had risen sharply as a result of dealing with the large number of complaints, the overwhelming majority of which are not accepted.
Probe: Vanquis said in January that its car finance arm, Moneybarn, was not affected by the FCA’s review of car finance loans because it has never offered variable commissions
Vanquis said it is considering taking legal action “to address this situation.”
It added that the majority of third-party complaints received by Vanquis are not related to the Financial Conduct Authority’s investigation into historic motor finance commission schemes, and in fact relate to Vanquis’ credit card business.
For fiscal year 2025, meanwhile, Vanquis expects RoTE to remain at a single-digit level due to the “near-term adverse impact” of accounting requirements related to accounts receivable growth.
By late afternoon, Vanquis’s share price had fallen 39.6 per cent to 75p, making it by far the biggest faller on the FTSE All-Share Index.
The FCA investigation into historic car finance loans, launched in January, will examine so-called ‘discretionary commission arrangements’ (DCAs), which previously covered around three-quarters of all car finance deals.
DCAs were controversial because they allowed car dealers and brokers to charge whatever interest rate they wanted on a loan, encouraging them to charge higher rates. They were eventually banned in 2021.
Over the past year, however, more and more customers have told regulators that lenders wrongly denied compensation for DCAs.
The Financial Ombudsman Services recently ruled in favor of two clients whose cases were dismissed, while others were upheld by the court.
As lenders were expected to receive a flood of complaints in the wake of these rulings, the FCA launched an investigation into DCAs and told car finance providers to pause their responses to complaints received since November 17.
Many analysts believe the investigation could reflect the payment protection insurance scandal, which led to banks paying out around £40 billion in compensation.
Vanquis said in January that its car finance arm, Moneybarn, was not affected by the FCA investigation because it has never offered variable commissions.
Later this month, the company plans to launch a strategy to return RoTE levels to the mid-teens from 2026 through a return to ‘sustainable income growth’.
On Monday the company warned that moves to overhaul its products and prices would result in full-year revenues being ‘materially lower’ than the £538.3 million estimated by analysts.
Ian McLaughlin, CEO of Vanquis, said: ‘We must meet short-term challenges but remain confident that the group’s new strategy will deliver good results for our customers and attractive and sustainable returns for our shareholders in the medium and long term.’