The home credit service

Home credit provides a convenient way for people from all walks of life to borrow relatively small sums of money at short notice, in a manageable and transparent way. It is predominantly a woman-to-woman business - around three-quarters of agents and over half our customers are women. 

We mainly lend in cash, in local currency, with sums ranging from as little as £50 to over £1,000. On average, we lent around £330 to each of our customers during 2008. Loans are short-term ranging from six months to two years, but most are for a period of about a year. 

For the majority of home credit loans, we fix the total amount repayable on the loan at the outset and do not levy any penalty charges or interest as a result of missed payments. This applies regardless of the number of missed payments or changes in interest rates. Customers are not required to provide any form of guarantee or security in order to qualify for a loan. 

The credit vetting of customers, the provision of the loan and the collection of weekly instalments are all performed in the convenience of the customer's home by a home credit agent who is responsible for servicing the customer's needs throughout their relationship with IPF. 

New flexible products

As a part of our drive to deliver improved customer focus we have decided to roll-out what we call our flexible products. This is an evolution of our traditional product which provides our customers with additional choice and greater transparency by breaking down the price structure into individual elements (for example interest, administration and collection fees) and offering the choice of using our unique home service for repayments or using the traditional banking system. We have already successfully introduced this into Poland and Slovakia and following pilots in all our other markets we have decided to roll it out across all of them in 2009. This new product will replace the existing offering. 

Our experiences in Poland and Slovakia clearly demonstrate that the majority of customers prefer the agent to collect their weekly instalments. We believe, however, that the new product offer will be appreciated by our customers and will greatly help others better understand home credit and the constructive role it plays in many people's lives.

Five reasons to believe

Customers like our home credit service because:

We're fast
We deliver rapidly - typically within 48 hours of our first customer contact.

We're accessible
Our loans are delivered in the home by our agents, the majority of whom are female. This 'loan to home' approach is valued by our customers and facilitates gathering additional information before a loan is granted.

We're inclusive
Our customers are typically not well served by banks. They often have no credit history and prefer to use cash. Our simple and transparent approach appeals particularly well to this customer group.

We're personal
An agent is key to the customer relationship - meeting the customer each week in their home to collect repayments. They make further loans as appropriate and as their knowledge of the customer's payment history and credit requirements develops.

We're flexible
Our approach to credit is distinctive. On our home collected product no interest is added for late payment, there are no hidden charges and no default charges because we understand that it can be difficult to manage the household budget when the unexpected happens.