The former chief executive of
Bank of Queensland has been appointed as the interim executive chairman of payday lender, Cash Converters.
Stuart Grimshaw – who resigned from Bank of Queensland in August 2014 – was appointed as part of a board shake-up in the wake of the payday lender’s long-serving chairman and Australia CEO Ian Day’s retirement,
Fairfax has
reported. Day retired last week after 23 years at the Perth-based company.
According to
Fairfax, Cash Converters has hired consultants CACE Partners to do a full review of the business over the next 16 weeks. This will then guide the company’s three-year strategic growth plan, with CACE and inform the market of its plans by January.
It will be a hard slog for Grimshaw, with the payday lender reporting a net loss of $21.4 million in 2015, down 188% from a profit in 2014 of $24 million.
In March, ASIC put the payday lending sector on notice after a regulatory investigation found payday lenders were “falling short” of meeting its compliance responsibilities under the NCCP.
In July, ASIC ordered Australia’s second-largest listed payday lender, Money3, to stop offering its two payments ‘fixed fee’ loan arrangement, and to refund more than $100,000 to consumers.
In August,
Westpac has confirmed it will no longer provide funding to Cash Converters and Money3 after conducting a thorough internal review into payday lending.
According to
Fairfax, Grimshaw has been on the board of Cash Converters since November 2014, when he became executive chairman at the Texas-based pawnbroker EZCorp. EZCorp is Cash Converters' biggest shareholder, owning 27.9% of the company. Grimshaw is now EZCorp's CEO.
