Loan Packaging Company Announces Pre Tax Losses
Looking back over 2008, it has been a difficult year for anyone connected with the finance industry, whether it has been as an adviser or broker, a bank or building society, or a personal loan company, the credit crunch and slow down in the UK economy has had a huge impact on the industry as a whole and there have been several big name casualties along the way, making it even harder for a potential borrower to obtain the personal loan funding they need and require.
In line with this news, Loanmakers, one of the UK’s largest personal loan packaging companies has just announced its business results for the first half of the year and, not entirely surprisingly, has shown a massive downturn in new business sales, with a pre tax loss of £1.6 million.
This compares with a profit of £346,000 for the company for the first six months of 2007 and just goes to show how things have turned around within the personal loan industry.
Loanmakers have been forced to make significant levels of redundancies as new loan applications have slowed throughout the year and blame the economic slow down and credit crunch for the poor results, along with tightening lending criteria from loan providers and falling house prices reducing equity levels available for secured loans.
Earlier this year, shareholders in Loanmakers rejected an offer to inject a further £1.86 million into the company.
Commenting on the figures, Ges Ratcliffe of Loanmakers said “Relations with both lenders and introducers remain positive, but given the current economic outlook it is unlikely that trading performance will improve in the second half of the year.
The board is extremely disappointed that the recently proposed underwritten open offer was rejected by shareholders as this represented an opportunity to inject capital into the business. Given this disappointing outcome the board continues to review its options for the group.”
