Grant Thornton administrators appointed to HCST lender MMP Financial

Grant Thornton’s Chris Laverty, Trevor Patrick O’Sullivan and Helen Dale have been appointed joint administrators to the lender.

As such, there will be no new lending activity and borrowers should continue to make payments to the firm if they have any outstanding loans with it.

The administrators confirmed they will conduct an orderly wind down of the business and sale of the assets and start the process of identifying all creditors.

It comes less than 24 hours after another lender, Piggybank, collapsed.

Jason Wassell, chief executive of the Consumer Finance Association (CFA), a trade body which represents lenders, said: “While some may cheer the exit of another lender, it is not quite the cause for celebration for many families that rely on borrowing at this time of year.

“Even within the last few weeks, we have seen the departure of a number of commercial lenders and not-for-profit credit unions for various reasons. Meanwhile, many lenders are pulling back or taking a very cautious approach to lending. This raises an important question as to where people will be able to access credit, just a small sum to see them over this holiday period.

“We are not necessarily suggesting that this will lead to a rise in loan sharks using baseball bats to collect, but we do suspect we will see an increase in unregulated borrowing. This might be from hard-pressed family members, and sometimes, it will be from individuals with links to criminality.”