Settlement Reached With Commerce Commission

Statement 29 October 2007

SETTLEMENT REACHED WITH COMMERCE COMMISSION

Geneva Finance Ltd has reached a settlement with the Commerce Commission in relation to interest and fees charged to some clients who were not meeting their commitments under their loan from Geneva and had had security sold.

An investigation was carried out by the Commission in relation to the debiting by Geneva of default charges, including court costs, and interest to some customer accounts whose security has been sold. Recovering interest and fees on those accounts accrued after the sale of security would be a breach of the Credit (Repossessions) Act 1997. When Geneva sent its regular statements to those customers that included those fees and interest, the statements would have misstated the amount recoverable by Geneva and so would have been in breach of the Fair Trading Act.

CEO Shaun Riley stated “We cooperated fully with the Commission, and have reached a settlement on this issue we are satisfied with. As a high percentage of these charges are internal, there is minimal impact on our business. There is no ongoing effect on the company’s liquidity or overall operations and this has been fully provided for in its financial statements and forecasts. We fixed this issue once we became aware of the position and, back in July, we reversed all of the charges from these accounts and refunded the charges for 38 customers who had paid in full.”

“Last week we advised all of our investors of the settlement, so that they are fully informed.”

ends-

© Scoop Media