On 9th January 2023 Joseph O’Connor, Simon Appell and Clare Kennedy of AlixPartners were appointed Joint Administrators of the Company.

An Administration is a procedure available to companies that are insolvent.

It gives the Company protection from its creditors and allows the Joint Administrators to assess the options for the business.

Whilst the Company is in Administration, the affairs, business and property of the Company are managed by the Joint Administrators.

The Joint Administrators act as agents of the Company in Administration and without personal liability.

As you may be aware, the business has been operating in a challenging trading environment, which became progressively more difficult due to factors that reduced lending volumes, as well as changes within the regulatory environment in which the Company operates.

As a result, the financial performance of the Company has deteriorated and been considerably below forecast profitability. The business was not in a position to continue to meet all its debts as they fell due and was likely to become balance sheet insolvent and fall below required regulatory capital obligations.

Steps were therefore taken to protect the assets of the Company by placing it into Administration.

The Joint Administrators have worked with the Company to stabilise its operations. As part of this process, and to ensure that any impact on customers is minimised, the Joint Administrators enabled the Company to continue to provide lending facilities to some existing customers in accordance with the Company’s current lending practices for a defined period of time.

This period has now ended - please see the following section for further details

The Joint Administrators have been in regular contact with the FCA during the course of the Administration to ensure all regulatory matters are attended to and the FCA consented to the Joint Administrators’ appointment.

Collections for outstanding SafetyNet and Tappily loans have now ceased with effect from 9 April 2024. For any customers who still had an outstanding balance at this point, this has been marked as partially settled on their credit file to reflect that the loan was not fully repaid.

Please note that this does not include any accounts transferred to Lantern prior to the Administration, the balances in respect of which remain due for payment as usual. Customers whose accounts have been transferred to Lantern should be able to access their accounts and make payments as normal.

For more information on what this means and how credit files work please visit ico.org.uk/for-the-public/credit.

You can check on the government website for any benefits and financial support available to you, as follows: https://www.gov.uk/check-benefits-financial-support

The following advice services are also available:

Services	Contact Details	Services offered
Citizens Advice	www.citizensadvice.org.uk Tel: 0800 240 4420	Debt and consumer advice service with specialist caseworkers to deal with any type of debt, including repossessions and negotiation with creditors.
Money Helper	www.moneyhelper.org.uk Tel: 0800 011 3797	Free and impartial help with money, backed by the government.
National Debtline	www.nationaldebtline.org Tel: 0808 808 4000	Free and independent advice and resources to help people deal with their debts.
StepChange	www.stepchange.org Tel: 0800 138 1111	Debt charity that can provide expert debt advice and fee-free debt management to help you tackle your debts.

All complaints submitted prior to the Administrators’ appointment have now been reviewed and assessed and customers have been contacted to advise of the outcome via a final response and what that means for them.

No new complaints will be accepted with effect from 15 April 2024. All complaints submitted prior to this date have been assessed and customers advised of the outcome as usual.

A first and final dividend of 6.65 pence in the pound was paid to all unsecured creditors with agreed claims on 6 June 2024. This means that a claim of £1,000 received a dividend of approximately £66.50.

The Company is insolvent, which means that it did not have enough money to repay all its creditors in full. The funds available have been distributed equally between all unsecured creditors at the same time, in proportion to the amounts owed to each of them. The above dividend represents all of the funds available to unsecured creditors.