Manx Financial Group plc (LON:MFX) Chief Executive Officer Douglas Grant caught up with DirectorsTalk to discuss first-half 2026 performance, record loan book, Payment Assist growth, the creation of Triskel Finance, AI and automation and the Group’s priorities for the second half of 2026.
Q1: Douglas, could you just first give us your assessment of the first half of 2026 for the Group?
A1: I think that we’re all fully aware of the economic environment we’re all creating, I think it’s a difficult time for consumers and small businesses alike. So, I think our performance of our profit of £3.4 million was pretty solid. When we take away the one-offs that we enjoyed in previous years, we’re in line with the underlying number.
I think what was really pleasing was that we saw a really good top-line growth. Operating income grew to £19.7 million up from £18.4 million and indeed, the loan book is sitting at a record number of £423 million, which is up from £393 million. These increases in income and loan book growth were done at the cost of yield, and our yield remains pretty high at 9%, so that’s a net yield.
So, it’s been done through offering the right products to a difficult market at the right time. So, a pretty solid performance.
Q2: Now, the loan book, as you say, it hit a record £422.9 million during the period. What was driving that growth?
A2: We have three real distribution lines, and all have been operating very well for us in the first half of the year, particularly the local market, the Isle of Man market.
The loan book there, we lend about a £1 million a week on the Island, and we’ll park that number for the moment. We lend £6/£7 million a week in the UK but on Island, we lend £1 million a week. The loan book is now just over £109 million, it’s got very, very level arrears so it’s underpinned a lot of the performance.
Then we look into the UK, and we mentioned the difficult economic circumstances in the UK, we can see the Payment Assist, for example, it lends just over £71 million in the first half of the year, that’s 32% up year in year. So, there’s a real demand for that short-term lending product in the automotive industry in particular.
Our structured finance business, which is the third arm of our lending in the UK, it was also ahead of last year.
So, all three of our key lending or key three methods of distribution performed very well in the first half.
Q3: Payment Assist, it really did have a strong six months. What was it that drove that momentum?
A3: Like I said, in this economic environment, I think there’s no point having long-term products because of the value erosion of money over time, and we lend at a fixed rate. We take our retail deposits, our two banking licences that are fixed rate as well.
So, shorter-term lending is really helpful for us because we can move yields as and when the market allows us to move, deposit rates go up and down as when the Bank of England moves its interest rate, etc.
So, there is no doubt that having short-term lending products for consumers and small businesses that have unexpected bumps in the road, such as Payment Assist where it’s buy now, pay later products, such as premium finance, such as often short-term lenders, such as overdrafts or bridging facilities etc.
These are all products which are in great demand at this point in the economic cycle. So, it’s about having the right products available to the right customer in the right market.
Q4: So, which areas of the business have you seen the strongest demand for borrowing now?
A4: Without doubt is that buy now, pay later, that is Payment Assist.
Q5: Could you tell us a bit about your rationale for consolidating three of your subsidiaries into one business, Triskel Finance?
A5: We’ve got three subsidiaries in the business and they’re all slightly different, but what they’ve all got in common is liquidity and finance.
We have one which was a lender in subprime BLX, so we’ve got a lender. We’ve got one which was a funding broker, so they had over 40 funding arrangements with other banks and the third one was a very good collections engine.
So, by bringing all three together, what it means that we’ve got different areas of origination coming from the broker and coming from the lender and if we can’t satisfy the demand through the lender, we can broker it out through one of the many funders that we have. At the back end, we’ve now bolted on a really good collections business, that’s Manx Collections as it was, into this Triskel brand.
So, we’ve now got the three businesses sitting together with one common purpose and it’s also allowed us to reduce overheads both on the FTE side and on the general overheads by pulling them all together.
We’ve got one efficient business with one key strategy in mind, which is to deliver revenue growth, and we’re looking at increasing the group’s profit by £1 million for the year end in 2028.
Q6: Now, you recently signalled a focus on the development of AI and automation within the Group. How has the business benefited from this so far?
A6: There’s different ways you can use AI, actually, most businesses acquire the AI, they probably don’t even realise that AI has been used so it helps in decision engines, etc.
We’ve deliberately deployed AI in certain aspects, not to improve the testing of software in the business but we’ve actually used it to develop and improve the process.
So example, the DCA scheme where we have 5,000 customers, we’ve used AI and we’ve saved a lot of money by deploying AI in terms of analysing all the complaints, responding to all the complaints, but keeping the human in the loop. So, it’s really improved the process.
Our operational capability increases, we’ve become more scalable but also there’s a real customer element to it. We accelerate the customer experience, we give the customer the preferences and how they want to communicate with us. So there’s a real customer angle to it, but there’s also an operational efficiency gain to be had for us.
We will grow our AI but also be always making sure we’ve got the right governance in place.
Q7: How comfortable are you with the Group’s capital and funding position as the book grows?
A7: Well, with these two banking licences and the banking licence on the Isle of Man, for example, is over £40 billion on deposits on the Isle of Man, £20 billion is our sweet spot. We have fixed-term deposits on notice accounts in the UK, that’s in trillions. So, we’ve got access to plenty of liquidity, so I have no concern on the liquidity side.
I think a loan deposit ratio of 93/ 94% the half year, which is a really efficient use of turning the raw material, i.e. a deposit, into our finished product, such as the hire purchase product or the lease, and then having the customer at the end of it. So, we’re very efficient at taking that liquidity and turning it into a product.
I have no issue with where we are in terms of liquidity, capital distribution at this point. What I would say to us is it’s always about optimising . So, even if you’re 10 times more capital, you’d always want to optimise it. So, we’re looking at what’s the optimum way we can deploy our rate of capital at any point in time. What’s the optimum amount of liquidity we need to raise to satisfy the demand that we’ve got sitting there on our books.
Q8: What’s next for Manx Ventures and what should shareholders keep an eye out for?
A8: Well, Manx Ventures has been good. It’s got 11 equity transactions completed in the last dozen years or so, so it’s been very good at getting the transaction onto its books. It’s been very good at growing and Payment Assist is a great example of that, so it’s been very good at growing businesses.
We’ve now got to complete that cycle and have Manx Ventures actually look at disposing of certain assets because there’s a level of embedded profit within the group just because of the way a currency works where the market value of the company isn’t reflected in the account.
So, we’ve got an embedded profit sitting there within Manx Ventures, it’s about releasing some of that embedded profit at the right time back to shareholders. It’s about disposal of assets.
Q9: Douglas, just before we go though, what are Manx Financial Group’s priorities and up and coming catalysts for the second half and beyond?
A9: We can see that we’ve got good organic growth. As I’ve mentioned, we’ve got great access to liquidity, and we’ve got good distributions working well.
What I’d like to see in the second half of the year is finish what we started. I’d like to deliver the Irish consumer credit licence to Payment Assist, so we start accessing Europe with that product. It’s basically the same product, same system, same people so it’s a very lean way to access that market. So, I’d like us to do that.
We’ve got the overdraft product, which we should have deployed to us by the end of this year. So, I’d like to see that product being deployed into the UK market beginning of 2027.
So, in some ways, it’s about keep the organic growth going but also finishing off what we started in terms of a couple of projects, and that’ll all add to the performance in 2027 and beyond.
