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Amigo’s new chairman pledges ‘sensitivity’ to customers amid health crisis

Paloma Kubiak
Written By:
Paloma Kubiak
Posted:
Updated:
13/10/2020

The financial watchdog has approved a new chairman for Amigo Holdings PLC who said it will continue to be sensitive to customers during the pandemic.

The Financial Conduct Authority has approved Jonathan Roe for the role of chair of the company, effective from today.

Acting chair, Roger Lovering who has held the position since 11 June, has resigned with immediate effect.

Roe said: “I am delighted to formally become Amigo’s new chairman. Nothing I have seen in the last two months since I joined the board as a non-executive director, has diminished my belief that everyone at Amigo shares a common intent of serving its current and future customers’ needs.

“We have significant challenges but we have the spirit to meet them. We have geared up to handle the October end of Covid-19 forbearance and we continue to be sensitive to the uncertainties that many of our customers are currently facing.”

Lovering added: “I stated publicly that I would leave the board of the company when we had refreshed the board in an orderly manner. In Jonathan, Gary and Maria we have gathered a talented team that will take the company forward and help to restore the company to the position where it can refocus on delivering customer focused solutions for its core customers, who remain underserved by the wider financial sector.”

It’s been a turbulent year for the guarantor lender as in January, it put itself up for sale and launched a strategic review amid “a challenging operating environment” and concerns over “increased regulation”.

And in March at the start of the pandemic, it paused lending except for key workers in exceptional circumstance.

Then in summer, the sub-prime lender revealed it was being investigated by the FCA over the way it assessed customers’ ‘creditworthiness’.

Meanwhile, it entered an agreement with the FCA to clear a backlog of 9,000 complaints and set aside £35m as part of its plan.