Analysts Briefing

Provident Financial PLC
29 June 2001


Analysts Briefing

The company will today speak with analysts at a pre-close period briefing
ahead of its half year results and will make the following comments about
trading during the five months ended 31 May 2001 and the outlook for the year.

Group Outlook for 2001

We are making good progress with profits growing in line with expectations and
we remain confident of a good result for 2001.

UK Home Credit Division

The market for home credit remains competitive but stable. We said when we
announced our 2000 results in February of this year that we expected UK home
credit customer numbers, credit issued and profit for 2001 to grow at similar
rates to 2000. This remains our view.

We continue to focus on maintaining the quality of our lending and that has
been successful. Bad debt as a percentage of credit issued remains stable.

Credit issued in the first 5 months has been in line with expectations, as
have profits. Customer numbers are expected to be slightly lower half year on
half year - partly due to our tightening controls over customer recruitment.
We expect quality customer growth to benefit from a number of new initiatives
in the second half of this year. These initiatives include a Provident
Financial branded home-shopping catalogue produced and managed by Findel plc
and the roll-out of the cross selling of motor insurance through the agent
network which we piloted successfully last year. We continue to expect
customer growth for the full year to be similar to that achieved in 2000.

International Division

In the International division, the aims for this year were to continue with
rapid customer growth in Poland and the Czech Republic, bringing both
countries into profit for the year, and to open pilot operations in Hungary
and Slovakia. Our progress to date has been good.

We opened for business in March in Slovakia and May in Hungary and the
progress to date is encouraging. In the more established markets of Poland and
the Czech Republic high rates of customer growth continue. We said in February
of this year that we expected to see growth and better operating efficiency
translate into much improved profitability in both countries throughout this
year. We are seeing this improvement being delivered.

As expected, the bad debt rate in the fast growing Central European operations
is increasing from the exceptionally low levels seen in 2001 as the businesses
mature. In Poland, our largest international market, credit quality is
developing broadly as expected and bad debts as a percentage of credit issued
are running at around 6%. In the Czech Republic, bad debts have increased to
7.25% of credit issued and prices have been increased to compensate for the
additional costs.

South Africa has seen tougher trading conditions in the first half of the year
and is unlikely to move into profit this year. It remains a small part of the
division.

In the seasonally quiet first half of the year, we expect the International
division to report a loss much reduced from the £6.9m reported at the 2000
half year and the division remains on track to deliver profits for the year.

Insurance Division

The Insurance division is performing well. As expected, premium increases and
volume growth have slowed. Our expectation remains for good profit growth for
the division for 2001.

Results Announcement

The group's results for the six months ended 30 June 2001 will be announced on
23 July 2001.

                                                             John van Kuffeler

                                                                      Chairman

                                                                  29 June 2001

Enquiries:

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David Stevenson               01274 731111


Investor Relations

Elizabeth Bottomley           01274 731111