4 October 2022

Morses Club PLC

Board Changes

Morses Club PLC ("Morses Club", the "Company" or, together with its subsidiary undertakings, the "Group"), an established provider of non-standard credit services, provides the following update on changes to the Board.

Sir Nigel Knowles will be stepping down from his role as Chair of the Board with effect from 4 November 2022 in order to dedicate more time to his other principal role as the CEO for the global legal firm DWF Group PLC. Sir Nigel joined the Morses Club Board in May 2016, when he was appointed Senior Independent Director, before becoming Chair in March 2022.  

Morses Club also announces that Michael Yeates will be stepping down from the Board with effect from 4 November 2022. Michael joined the Board in May 2021 as an Independent Non-Executive Director. Michael joined the Morses Board in order to bring his significant experience in the retail banking sector to developing a retail banking offer. Following a change in business strategy to focus on the development of non-standard credit services, Michael has decided to step down to continue with his other business interests.

The Board will update the market on their replacements once confirmed.    

Gary Marshall, Chief Executive Officer of Morses Club, commented:

"We would like to thank both Sir Nigel and Michael for their contribution to the Board during their time with us, and for their continued support during a period of considerable change. We wish them both the very best for the future.

"We will commence the search for Board replacements immediately, with careful consideration for Morses Club's future business and funding strategy and as we continue to work up the detail of a potential Scheme of Arrangement."

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) 596/2014. The person responsible for this announcement is Graeme Campbell, Chief Financial Officer.

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Notes to Editors

About Morses Club

Morses Club is an established provider of non-standard credit services in the UK. The Group consists of Morses Club, the UK's largest home collected credit ("HCC") provider¹, and Shelby Finance Limited, Morses Club's Digital division, which operates under the online brand of Dot Dot Loans, an online lending provider.  The Group's growing Digital capabilities and scalable, highly invested IT platform has enabled Morses Club to deliver a range of lending products to the non-standard credit market.

UK HCC is considered to be a specialised segment of the broader UK non-standard credit market. UK HCC loans are typically small, unsecured loans delivered directly to customers either remotely or in their homes.

Morses Club's HCC division is the largest UK Home Collected Credit (HCC) lender¹ with 143,000 customers throughout the UK.   The HCC division enjoys consistently high customer satisfaction scores of 97%². In 2019 the Company introduced an online customer portal for its HCC customers, used by 81% of customers.

The Group's growing Digital division, Shelby Finance, operates under the online brand Dot Dot Loans which provides online instalment loans of up to 48 months to c. 39,000 active customers.

Morses Club listed on AIM in May 2016.

About the UK non-standard credit market

The UK non-standard credit market, of which UK HCC is a subset, consists of both secured and unsecured lending and is estimated to comprise around 10 million consumers ³  and total loan receivables of £9.6bn ⁴ .

Non-standard credit is the provision of secured and unsecured credit to consumers other than through mainstream lenders. Lenders providing non-standard credit principally lend on an unsecured basis and the market is characterised by high frequency borrowing. Approximately 2 million people move annually between standard and non-standard markets ⁴ .

Since February 2014, unsecured personal lending has grown from £161 billion to £225 billion in February 2020. It has since contracted to £197 billion in August 2021 ⁵ .

^{1 Based on Net Loan Book of £45.3m as at 28 August 2021}

^{2 Independent Customer Satisfaction Survey conducted by Mustard
3 FCA High Cost Credit Review Technical Annex 1: CRA data analysis of UK personal debt - July 2017
4 Apex Insight - Non-Prime Consumer Credit: UK Market Insight Report - December 2020
5 Table A5.2, Bank of England Money and Credit Bank stats August 2021}