Morses Club announces acquisition of Shelby Finance

(ShareCast News) - Home collected credit lender Morses Club has announced the acquisition of Shelby Finance, a provider of online instalment loans, for an undisclosed sum.Morses said the deal is an important strategic development as it will accelerate the launch of a new, branded online instalment loan product.It pointed out it has seen an increasing number of visitors to its website who are looking for alternatives to its core HCC offering. Morses said the introduction of an online instalment loan product is the next step in its strategy of developing digital products to complement its HCC offering and target a wider range of customers across the UK non-standard credit market.Chief executive officer Paul Smith said: "The acquisition of Shelby Finance is another example of the progress we continue to make with our strategic plan of using technology to offer customers a broader range of products, supplementing our core home collected credit offering and ensuring customers can access credit with the flexibility they require."Outside the HCC sector, there are around 9 million additional customers who access the wider non-standard credit market. The introduction of our new branded online instalment loan product will enable us to offer these customers access to credit in increasingly flexible ways with all the benefits of Morses Club's customer service ethos.Shelby will operate as a subsidiary of Morses.At 1000 GMT, the shares were down 3.2% to 123p.