We provide interest free loans to customers of garages when they take their car in for a service. The customers bill is paid on their behalf and our commission is taken from the garage. We collect from the customer in 4 instalments, an initial deposit of 25% followed by 3 monthly instalments of 25% each.
We also provide other longer term and niche lending in the wills and trust sector and the automotive sector.
We are also just about to offer a short term interest free facility to clients of one of the largest companies in the automotive parts sector to finance mechanics purchasing tools and equipment from them, this will be short term interest free finance, over a 10 week period.
We partner with respected brands within each industry (for example Bristol Street Motors & Formula One Autocentres) and set an agreement up with these partners to finance their customers.
We aim to become the alternative choice for people who have a higher than expected bill, rather than putting the debt onto a credit card or taking out a pay day loan, we offer them the ability to spread the cost of the bill at no extra cost.
We have over 500 sites live on our website, with some major names within the industry, we are also in negotiations with possibly over 1,500 more directly, with a potential reach of up to 18,000 via an industry partner.
We have developed an online portal, which is simple to use and gives the garage an immediate response, whilst not leaving a footprint on the clients credit file. This makes the transaction both quick and easy to use and also allows our whole process to be an online one, with a confirmation of the transaction sent to the customer, the garage and to Payment Assist, the future payments automatically set up and the customer notified prior to each of the transactions.
The transactions themselves are a win-win-win scenario, the customer wins because they get an interest free payment plan, the garage wins as they make sure they complete all of the work required on the car (across the industry it is estimated that over 50% of quoted work on vehicles is not undertaken and is effectively lost sales to the garage, data from one of our customers shows that the level of retained work can increase by up to 40%), they improve their customer satisfaction and retention and Payment Assist win as we charge a commission on the transactions.
There are substantial growth opportunities in the sector with the UK automotive repair market being worth £6.7bn, the European market is worth €229.3bn and the US market is worth $246bn.
We have already had a number of repeat customers, who have benefited from utilising the Payment Assist payment plan.
We have found that the business has a positive impact on our partners sales, allowing them to sell products that they would otherwise have lost the sale on.
Payment Assist has been set up in over 500 automotive garages, including a number of significant brands in the market, including Bristol Street Motors, Renault, HiQ (part of Goodyear Dunlop), Formula 1 and Glyn Hopkin.
Our YTD receivables are in excess of £1.4m.
Our default debt is currently less than 0.1% of our receivables.
Payment Assist has funding lines of £2.2m in place currently, with another £5m provisionally agreed.
Payment Assist Ltd is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and we obtained our full permissions in October 2014, our FRN is 622544.
The funds will be used in a number of ways, the majority will allow for the growth of the business to be enhanced further by providing the funds to bridge the gap between our lenders financing (currently at 70%) and what we have to pay our customers.
Part of the funds will be used to develop the tool sales proposition which will provide an additional income stream.
The funds will also be utilised to develop the website further to enhance its capabilities and reduce the amount of time involved in processing transactions by automating a number of steps. We aim to begin recruiting additional members of staff, which the funds will assist in both the recruitment and the set up of these.