Provident slips on dismissed director's unfair dismissal claims

Provident Financial shares took another hit on Monday on news that four former managers of its restructured doorstep lending business will be given employment tribunals after claiming for unfair dismissal.

The ex-boss of Provident’s home credit business, Andy Parkinson, has a hearing scheduled for mid-April and three other executives hired to work at the division under Parkinson will have their hearings in the the spring, The Times reported.

Parkinson has argued, the newspaper reported, that a failure of the company's data to guide agents to the right homes at the right time was the chief cause of the problems, rather than a supposed revolt by agents, stating he had “bulletproof confidence that any objective investigation into the wide-ranging changes that were made to the home credit operating model" will this, and that accountability for these areas rests with "directors other than myself".

Last year Provident's bungled restructuring of its doorstep lending business, where part-time self-employed agents were replaced by a smaller number of full-time iPad-armed staff saw the loss of thousands of customers and many millions.

By the financial year end, active customer numbers had rebounded to 530,000 from 500,000 in September, but this is down from the 800,000s seen before the troublesome change of operational model. Receivables for the division closed the year at £350m, a drop from £560m a year ago.

Provident's struggles to "reconnect" with customers of the doorstep credit arm was not as good as directors had hoped, with fewer customers and agents coming back on board in the fourth quarter, which resulted in a higher impairment charge and a full-year pre-exceptional loss of roughly £115m.

Provident, which is under investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority over its Moneybarn car loans business and its Vanquis Bank subsidiary and is still looking for a permanent chief executive,