Vanquis Banking Group plc

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the presentation of our 2023 interim results. As in previous years, I will take you through the strategic highlights of the first year before Neeraj takes you through the financials. I'll then return for strategy and outlook and then finish with questions. As you know, this is my last results presentation, and I'll be handing over the CEO baton, I should say, today to Ian McLaughlin, who's joined us on the call as an observer.

Thanks, Malcolm. I'll just say a quick hello, everyone. Good morning. Should I take the baton from next week? So look forward to meeting you all in due course, but did just want to take a minute to say hi. Malcolm, I'll hand straight back to you, though. Thanks, Ian.

Right, turning firstly to slide four, as you can see, we've made significant progress in the first half of this year. We've completed our transformation to a specialist banking group, and our customers are now in the mid-cost and near prime markets, so lower risk, which means the credit risk profile of the group has changed significantly. And Niraj will give you more detail of this later in the presentation. In the first half, we successfully launched our Google Pay facility on our cards. And last week, we added Apple Pay. Interestingly, Apple Pay, only launched 10 days ago, is having a materially positive impact on card usage with 54,000 customer registrations and already almost half a million pounds in spend. In addition, in May, we repriced over 800,000 of our card customers, something we've never done before. And we've done it cautiously with concern for their affordability. But obviously, it's necessary to do so in a rising rate environment. Our vehicle finance business has grown strongly in the first half, particularly in the near prime space, as we've benefited enormously from being able to use our banking licence to reduce our funding costs. This funding advantage is something that none of our competitors have. They have suffered from the rising rate environment. In vehicle finance, we've also introduced the new PCP product, allowing customers who meet stringent affordability tests to have access to brand new cars for the first time. The group's second charge mortgage pilot is going well, which diversifies our lending offering. And on the funding side, we've also recently launched a new term notice account. These savings products of 90 to 120 days duration And initial marketing shows they appeal to our borrowing customers, as many of them have savings. In fact, during the testing phase, nearly 50% of applicants already had a bankers card. Obviously, notice accounts will additionally help diversify our funding base. I'm pleased to say we're also ready for the introduction of the FCA's new consumer duty. Obviously, that starts on the 31st of July and will be an important factor as we go forward. Financially, the group has delivered strong receivables growth year-on-year at 26%, which equates to almost £500 million of new receivables since June last year, all of which is from lower-risk customers than those perhaps we meant to historically. As I said at our preliminary presentation this year, our focus for 2023 is sustainable receivables growth with planned increased initial charges due to IFRS 9 accounting. The group has also continued to invest in transformational platform change, and this is on track, and has also executed robust cost control on those costs that we can control, as we're obviously in an inflationary environment. Once the investment in the platform is complete, significant operational and scalability efficiencies will be delivered to the group. Turning to dividend, the group board, reflecting on the group's strong financial performance, In June, we announced our new chair, Peter Eslin, strengthening the board's banking experience, and also Michelle Green's appointment added to our cards of banking strength. And as I said at the start of the call, and as you've heard, we have Ian joining us, who starts this group's new CEO at the beginning of next week. So, in summary, the group performed well in the first half of 2023. As previously outlined, we have grown customers and balances strongly, achieved a flat net interest margin during the phase migration to better quality customers, and have had higher planned IFRS 9 impairment charges due to the strong receivables growth. We've also controlled costs well and, where possible, mitigated inflation. We've completed important strategic initiatives, appointed a new chair and CEO, and are well positioned to continue growing the loan book responsibly and sensibly in the second half. Slide five shows why becoming a bank was so important to us and also to our customers. It was a journey we started several years ago, is now complete and is to my mind our biggest and most important change in the group. Being a bank basically means we get access to funding for the group through retail deposits. This funding is cheaper than wholesale financing and means we can borrow, can be more competitive than our competitors who aren't banks and therefore offer our customers better pricing. So a win for us, our customers and shareholders. To achieve this change, we closed the consumer credit division and fully deployed our banking license. Now all of our products are funded through the bank, either directly accessing retail deposit funding or through the PRA approved waiver. In total, now 75% of the group is funded by retail deposits compared to 58% when we started making this change. Also, the change meant that we now serve mid-cost and near-prime customers, a factor which helped the PRA in the first half reduce our total capital requirement by about a third, as our customers are seen by them now to be lower risk. So, the change to becoming a bank has opened up a larger customer market, made the group's funding costs cheaper, and reduced the amount of regulatory capital we need to hold to run the group. So, as I said earlier, becoming a bank was a big and significant change for us, successfully completed. And one which will benefit the group, our customers and shareholders, I think, for many years to come. So, thank you for listening, and I'll now hand over to Neeraj, who will take you through the numbers in more detail. Neeraj, over to you.