Member Info for hunniford

Has anyone had issues trading ARB with the IG platform? I had a message earlier to say it "Not suitable for European clients"

spent 2 hours on the phone. They then told me the FCA is banning brokers access to selling crypto assets, derivatives etc.

It took me a while to convince him this was a company not actual Crypto. I used the analogy where it is illegal to buy buns without a permit but it isn't illegal to buy share in the company that makes the guns.

They finally came back and said they are not allowing trading on this for anyone on their platform but no reason why? I have asked for a more detailed explanation but just wondered if anyone else had this? Had a look through the BB and couldn't see anything.

Nice Ex everyone needs a little win now and again. It reminds us why we are in Amigo :o)

Nice one showme I spread my wings into SYME, ARGO & TGR. I still have Amigo but hopefully these guys can soften the blow.

Meh. Have a look through my back posts. I focus on trying to understand what's going on. When I invest I invest long, I'm not a trader / day trader etc. I don't expect to post much here until I think I can add value, my post was more to say hi to the board and confirm I'm not a 10p or minus 10p tomorrow person and also a nod that I am invested, in case I do start posting more in the future.

Quote: Personally I think we are in a much much better position now than when we hit 20p 2/3 months ago, so I fail to see why other investors are not on the same page.

Hey Anony, when we hit 20p 2/3 months ago we basically had a hype train from JB saying he would underwrite a price to 20p if he got back into the company.

At that time we were also lending albeit tiny to Key workers & Nayan assured us complaints had turned a corner (which may be true but it was probably a 360 degree corner)

Out loan book is also a 1/3 smaller than it was before.

We also still have COVID going which 2/3 months ago i guess most people figured we'd be wrapped up by now and not putting people into Tier 4 and extending furlough until end of April.

The only way i see us better off from 2/3 months ago is that we have a better Board to try and beat this situation. Plus we now have a plan to get out of the mess with this scheme.

To sit and do nothing would have been dire. So on that basis I acknowledge things are probably better than a few months back.

Uh oh am I like some ex girlfriend stalker who has popped up?

Hey guys thought I would say Hi been watching this company for a bit and like the idea of the tech, so took the plunge. Christmas bonus money and all that. Also got bored on the Amigo board. Not a ramper or a deramper just interested in learning more about the company. Hope to add a little more at intervals depending on how we do.

Newt I think we will hear news. The claimants will need to know why their funds have been stopped. Otherwise the Amigo call centre will be like downtown Baghdad on a Friday after sunset, which makes their employees lives harder.

As i understood it they were waiting for approval from the FCA and from what i can see payments were made yesterday. They stopped today which is a bit sharp right before Christmas

We might get an RNS after hours outlining the pausing of payment. I don't think they would be very flagrant in terms of breach at this critical juncture. I imagine in order to get this scheme planned and up and running they will be heavily lawyered up.

Blind thanks for taking the time to respond on this. I looked into your background so I know you are decent.

I am also not knocking you as a CMC or indeed others. Business is business. Of course if something is there for the taking it will happen. My point is that if the company keeps going as is (which I think you agree) the individual claims and probably more so the CMC claims will run the business into the ground - since some CMC's spam out millions of emails to people who think fark why not and also say OF COURSE IT WAS UNAFFORDABLE even though it helped me consolidate and pay off my 2000% interest Sunny loans, nothing ventured nothing gained and go for it, with a "its worth a punt mentality"

Hence why the scheme is being touted. I guess for you guys the rush is on to sign up more and more people now. It is win win either way. you sign them up before the company writes to everyone, if the scheme happens you get your redress on behalf of your contracted client. Albeit lesser. If the scheme doesn't go ahead to push on with claims. Is that a fair assessment?

thanks again for posting.

Cheers guys appreciate the debate on this it is helpful. Looks like something has happened at Amigo towers according to our friends on Debt Camel: See below
QUOTE1:
Not sure if it’s anything to do with this scheme but, Just a heads up for anybody awaiting the payments gojng into their account. I’m in the 10 day process and today I have rang to see what is happening as their phone lines close as of tomorrow for Xmas. They have told me that they’ve received an email from higher up to stop any payments due to go out today or the next few days which would have been mine’ the staff on the phone have no idea why but hoping to come back to me with info by tonight. Appalled to be honest.

QUOTE2:
I submitted a borrower affordability complaint on 17/12/2020, received a response today from Amigo today. They talk about the proposal and essentially say they’re still processing complaints but won’t be paying anyone out “…so that those customers are treated consistently and fairly with all customers under the Scheme.”

I guess they may say they cannot raise debt for equity on the level of uncertainty for the company due to possible future claims that may or may not come. With the scheme they are saying they write to everyone and invite them to submit a claim if they think they have a valid claim and then that is it finalised and ringfenced.

I think with the scheme there will be more negotiating on it. After all in the world of dealing the first offer is very rarely accepted so I think this will take a few goes to try and make it suitable for all. It won't happen overnight (if it does). Maybe since they still plan to trade they can offer a higher value in the pound than they can demonstrate from administration?

Jimmy at the basic level I suppose it comes down to 2 options

1. Scheme is refused and the company goes into administration which means creditors get paid out of the assets and therefore shareholders get what is left after creditors have been paid which as we know will be zero since there are way more liabilities to creditors. However before creditors are paid the administrator ring fences their funds too. Then it would be just whatever cash is left at the moment which I estimate for estimating sake to be around £100M

The loan book can't be sold because it is now junk who would buy that? Also how do they work to redress that as well?

2. Scheme agreed and the firm can continue trading, servicing the creditors albeit not as much as they get for a full claim but it is something. A promise to add more into the pot, I suspect this is going to be negotiable, if they are still trading the FCA may suggest they up the fee in order to still trade.

What I don't get and maybe people can help me out if you have 6 months to make a claim, why are they putting 5% profits into the scheme for the next 3 financial years. I assume people will be waiting for up to 3 years then to see their money from the scheme?

Jimmy. I agree the company made mistakes and it should be (is being) punished to the tune of millions of pounds. I just don’t think it should be punished into administration. You cite other companies, but each company should be taken on individual merit. The people who should be getting punished, JB,GC, Hamish are no longer here and stripped the company for their own benefit, is this our fault
I don’t work for the company so I am unsure what controls were in place to check that everything was being followed. A business can spend millions on building compliance processes, training staff etc and then undermine it with incentives and bonuses for people to think they can "bend the rules" in order to get commission. (not saying this happened here)
I suspect the reason a lot of the claims are being upheld is because it is very difficult and resource intensive to investigate these complaints and it probably marries a number of different systems, such as credit checking (at the time of loan) affordability questions - which I know from debtcamel that many people blatantly lied plus other various internal controls. For example listening back on archived calls etc is very time consuming. then Amigo reject the claim only for it to go to the FOS, which adds £600 straight away. You then must prepare a statement to the FOS on why you think the claim is without merit and deal with them.
From what I could see the company were fighting claims but this got them into trouble with the FCA due to the time and effort it took. The company probably with hindsight took a very poor decision by going into the VREQ and saying that all complaints would be dealt by 30 October within 8 weeks. This was most likely a gift to the CMC companies and opened the floodgates on something the company initially planned as being manageable suddenly became out of control but they were committed to the FCA VREQ.
Coming back to your point on fairness. I believe many people took the chance to claim because they could, which is why they use a CMC. they don't give a 5h1t because they don't really expect anything back. It takes 10 mins of effort. Anything is a bonus so they will use the CMC as it's no win no fee - don't care approach. If you read on debt camel I think a lot of these people are genuine and probably are due a full redress. However, the actions of the CMC will likely liquidate the company due to the "chancers" meaning eventually those that deserve redress will eventually get nothing if the company goes under. I think this is unfair for the genuine claimants & on the company.
Obviously as an owner in the business, I am slightly biased and I don't think it was fair that the company had been put in a position where it was backed into a corner and therefore had to settle claims which most likely should have been fought, ergo this is probably why the claim uphold rate was so high. So because they pay out everyone thinks Guilty – a systemically bad company when it may not be the

Hey JimmyG56 you raise some interesting points. Good post. The company will have a lot of hard work to sell this scheme of course. I suspect the company wishes to put things along the lines of...

1. Mistakes were made in the past and the company is intending to put that right in a fair manner
2. The old leadership of amigo that made the mistakes of past are gone and the new leadership wishes to refocus the company
3. A deluge of complaints has arrived in a very opportunistic manner (i.e. people being spammed in by CMC "hey had an amigo loan you could be due £1000s in compensation” isn't exactly fair either?
3. Ultimately no-one put a gun their heads and made them take out the loan. There is an element of freewill at play here. Almost certainly many of these CMC claimants probably didn't think they had affordability issues until it got spelled out to them. I understand the onus to check affordability is on the company but it is a hell of an ask to lay this solely at the company's door. I don't have enough history to know if this was always the case? for instance my previous assumption of a guarantor loan was there was a high chance the lender could default hence the guarantor was there to step in but perhaps this was a little naïve.

On the point of taking responsibility. For example if I have a alcohol problem, should i blame Tesco for selling me Vodka everyday. Ultimately as an alcoholic I will go and get Vodka from somewhere / anywhere if I really want it. Therefore when I am lying in a hospital bed with Cirrhosis of the liver, should i be calling in the lawyers to hammer Tesco for selling me booze?
Look at the financial crisis how many people did the banks "roger from behind" yet they got bailed out and allowed to continue the Govt even bought a stake in a few banks. The same banks then shafted many people by saying you are sub prime, normal people who should not be sub prime, because they took the bailout money and didn't want to lend to Jo Public. This will happen again and more people will get marked sub prime. Likewise these same banks won't give many Amigo customers overdrafts etc, which are in the same interest rate range.
So, going back to your points. You will not be the only one asking the questions, I'm sure the leading folks like Martin Lewis will be opining on this and it will go mainstream. The company must transparently outline why they think the scheme is the correct way for the company to go.
Also when you say " But only one of those groups is being asked to take a hit under the scheme."
The Share price at IPO £2.75 from what I can see it went to £2.95 it is currently £0.083. So I don't think you can say shareholders haven't taken a hit. Tell me this if you bought last August at £1.64 would you think the scheme was a good idea now?

Of course the other point to note if the scheme is rejected and the company goes into administration then the insolvency experts will have to come in and liquidate the company. They obviously have to get paid first for what they do. If it is a big company like KPMG their partner hourly rate is about £400 - £800 per hour to do that work, plus the teams hourly rates.

This is correct.
£159M has been provisioned i.e. set out for claims.
£53.2m of this was utilised by Sept 2020 from half year results . So that would leave £100M at September. I'm not sure how many complaints they have resolved since then but I assume they kept going. So at a pure guess. Let's say another £30m = 5000 complaints redress and fees @£6000
£70m left with this estimate.
£15M extra initially paid in, plus extra £20m if needed
Circa £100M

So the company will need to update on this in order to make the scheme transparent. If they are successful at getting claims paused. the creditors will need to know

1. How much of the original £159m provision is left
2. How much has been agreed to be paid in outstanding claims before it paused.
3. How much is it going to cost to administer and run the SOA that won't be cheap, lawyers, claims management company etc
4. How many claims do they expect in the six month claim window, as this will likely be used for their forecasted pay-out average in the £ based on what's left and set aside from points 1 - 3

Of course it is a bit of an unknown and this is what will have to be voted on. They can only guess x amount of claims the reality might be more but if the scheme is approved that doesn't affect the company it only affects the creditors in terms of what they get.

I think it is fair to say that they have handled 90% of the claims that they know about. The market average is 88% upheld, with Amigo being the market leader. However there are far more POTENTIAL claims out there, otherwise they wouldn't be proposing this scheme. The floodgates are open for more to chance their arm and since they had to keep getting top up loans would suggest that the loans weren't affordable by current standards.

Therefore the scheme I believe is designed to try and kill off the CMC process. It shuts down claims after 6 months, in order to get it up and running they will have to engage with a huge cross section of people so of course that alerts more redress, which obviously makes the pot smaller.

However as it stands most who are getting redress are going through CMCs and ultimately lose about half of their claim in fees, so if the scheme can redress and demonstrate that they will pay above what a claimant would get using a CMC then it looks like a better arrangement. The debt camel crew won't be happy as that lady Sara basically works for free on their behalf and they get all of their redress. However they are probably in the minority.

The other option on the table is to let the business go under. They won't start any new lending without this scheme in place there is really no point, they are currently doing zero lending now. So with claims going at full tilt and no lending happening the loan book runs down very quickly given the debt that also has to be paid off.

The ultimatum really is take it or watch the business fold. From a morals point of view I can see why people would be happy for the business to fold. Ultimately AMIGO got itself into this mess blah blah. However the business is a gearing itself up to be a totally different operation. All the deadwood is gone. One thing that is clear is that JB the Knight In Shining armour wasn't blameless in all of this for him to say when he left the business it was absolutely fine is BS!

Guys you have to make a decision on your own merit. I would be recommending as many people as possible post their views. Evenif it differs from what you like or want to hear. With the exception - Other than the drivel houndog used to post.

Let's face it if everyone sits cheery and it tanks that is no good likewise if everyone is doom and it succeeds that isn't great as everyone will have sold.

Read the opinions and go off and do your own research. If it is too hot for you sell.

If you believe in the current BOD and can afford the risk stay in.

Yes the courts have the final say on the SOA they will consider what the company puts before them based on the following information

1. How the stakeholders decided via a vote
2. The views of the FCA would be taken into account
3. Before the vote the company will have to articulate to the stakeholders why they feel duty bound to make this arrangement. So they will have to produce documents about the scheme and explanatory information. Note this will have to be good since you are dealing with Joe Public too.

If it gets voted through the court make the final call. Note there is precedent on a scheme being voted through by creditors but not being approved by the court Re Sunbird Business Services Limited [2020] EWHC 249

In Re Sunbird Business Services [2020] EWHC 2493 (Ch), the High Court considered whether to sanction a scheme of arrangement that had been approved by the requisite majority of creditors but was opposed, on serious grounds, by the minority.