(Alliance News) - St James House PLC on Friday said it has seen a "modest increase" in account opening following on from the launch of its multicurrency account services despite UK lockdown conditions.
The UK-based company that delivers products across lottery and ecommerce saw account opening grow by 7.5% and an improvement in foreign exchange and account handle, with FX transactions increasing more than freefold, which was mostly driven by swaps to GBP from USD in the period from October 24 to date.
Continuing from the fourfold growth seen in October, the EUR account handle more than doubled compared to last month, and the UK account handle, which more than quadrupled in October, more than doubled during the last four weeks.
Pre-paid card products experienced a 20% increase in managed services, as well as an 18% increase in active cards and 7% growth in average card spend.
Despite the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, St James House said it expects the Prize Provision Services division to see out the year with roughly the same number of lines being played per week as at the end of 2019.
St James House said its legal services business, St Frances House Ltd, has seen an increase in current active cases of 52, giving a total of 182 cases live as of November 24 with a gross work in progress value of GBP470,000 - an increase of GBP170,000 in the last four weeks. Cases continue to be added at a rate of 10-15 per week and are beginning to settle and revenue realised, the company said.
Chief Executive Graeme Paton said: "Despite the obvious challenges that the Covid-19 crisis is serving to all types of businesses, we have been able to grow the account and FX business as clients find it difficult to open bank accounts or are seeking alternatives as redundancy to traditional providers."
Paton added: "The board continues to work closely with the Audit team to ensure that we can finalise the annual results and we will update as and when these are ready."
Shares in St James House were suspended at 40.00 pence in London on Monday.
By Zoe Wickens; zoewickens@alliancenews.com
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