One of the founders of Lendy has quit his role at wage advance company Copious Capital just one month after the collapse of the peer-to-peer (P2P) lender.
The company, which trades under the name Pay Me Today, was set up in May last year, twelve months before Lendy fell into administration, trapping thousands of pounds worth of investors cash in defaulted property development loans.
Pay Me Today says it is not a payday lender, but offers employees the chance to receive some of their already-earned wages ahead of their usual pay date. The company’s website says it does not constitute a loan and there are no interest charges.
Employees can be advanced anywhere between £50 and £450 depending on their circumstances, up to a maximum value of £5,000. Any approved wage advances are then deducted from the employee’s usual salary packet.
Lendy co-founder Liam Brooke terminated his appointment as a director at the company on July 1, following in the footsteps of Robert Kelly, also a former chief operating officer at Lendy, according to Companies House filings. Mr Kelly quit as a director at Copious Capital at the end of April, just weeks before Lendy went bust.
Copious Capital now has just one person in charge, “Miss Carmen Pamela Guillamon Gonzalez”, who was also appointed as a director on July 1.
It is not clear whether Miss Gonzalez is the same person who went by the name Pamela Guillamón, who is married to Mr Brooke and served as a marketing manager and operations manager at Lendy.
Pay Me Today did not reply to requests for confirmation of Miss Gonzalez’s identity or title at either Copious Capital or Pay Me Today.
There are currently no company accounts or annual statement for Copious Capital available to view on Companies House.
The company’s address was also recently changed to Brankesmere House in Southsea, Portsmouth, the same property Lendy purchased in 2015 as its head office.
Lendy’s administrators RSM recently found that in October 2018 Brankesmere House was transferred to a fellow group company, Brankesmere Ltd, for £862,000 as part of a series of dividends declared to the holding company totalling £1.8m.
Investors who lost money are reportedly furious that the peer-to-peer lender agreed the dividends prior to completing a £1.3m customer compensation scheme ordered by the City watchdog the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) back in 2017.
Original Source - The Telegraph
