Pre-close briefing

Provident Financial PLC
12 July 2005


Pre-close briefing

Provident Financial will today provide the following pre-close briefing to
analysts and investors.

The largest of the group's businesses, UK home credit continues to produce a
solid performance.  Although market conditions remain competitive and customer
numbers at the end of May 2005 were 4% lower than a year before, credit issued
for the five months to 31 May 2005 increased by 5% compared with the
corresponding period of 2004 as a result of selective increases in loan size to
lower risk, established customers.  Costs remain under tight control and credit
quality is stable.

In the five months to 31 May 2005, Yes Car Credit reported an unaudited pre-tax
loss of £4.6 million on sales volumes down by 26% on the corresponding period of
the previous year.  Market conditions remain depressed with reduced year on year
volumes in the used car credit market and new regulation causing a reduction in
the sales penetration of insurance products.  We have also seen a poorer than
expected collection performance in the early months of 2005 leading to a higher
than expected IFRS impairment charge.  As a result, we now expect bigger trading
losses, including some non-recurring costs, in the range of £15 million to £20
million for the full year in 2005.  In response, we have made substantial
changes to strengthen the quality and depth of management, appointing a number
of key individuals in the last three months. We are implementing a comprehensive
improvement plan designed to restore profitability. The initial target is to
move the business back to breakeven in 2006.  Although we have begun to see
early signs of improvement from changes made it is too early to quantify the
overall benefit that will be achieved.  We will provide a further update on
progress on the improvement plan with our interim results in mid September.

Vanquis Bank, which offers credit cards to the non-standard UK market, is
performing to plan.  In the initial months of the year we successfully expanded
our infrastructure to support the move from pilot to operational scale and in
the second quarter we increased the rate of customer recruitment.  At the end of
May 2005 we had 108,000 cardholders and are making good progress towards our
targets.

Provident Insurance is continuing to deliver excellent results.  Policyholder
numbers are stable at around 500,000 and claims costs continue to develop
favourably.

International division continues to generate strong growth with customer numbers
at the end of May 2005 20% higher than a year before and credit issued for the
five months to 31 May 2005, on a currency adjusted basis, growing by 16%.  IFRS
impairment charges are higher than anticipated, largely as a result of lower
than expected collection performance in Poland, but this is partly offset by an
improvement in the Czech Republic.  Favourable foreign exchange rates are
benefiting performance and, overall, results are in line with our expectations.

The performance of the group at this half-year is likely to be below market
expectations, but only as a result of the poor performance at Yes Car Credit.
Clear plans are now in place to correct this.  The remainder of the group, as a
whole, is generating good profit growth.

The comments in this briefing are made in relation to the group's results as
reported under International Financial Reporting Standards ('IFRS').  We have
set out at Appendix 1 the unaudited results for the half-year to 30 June 2004
prepared under IFRS in order to provide comparative data.

The group's interim results for the half-year ended 30 June 2005 will be
published on 14 September 2005.

Enquiries from 7.30 am:            Elizabeth Bottomley                01274 377939

Appendix 1

Unaudited results for the half-year to 30 June 2004 and full year to 31 December
2004, prepared under International Financial Reporting Standards.

Profit before taxation

                                                                Unaudited              Unaudited
                                                             Half-year to           Full year to
                                                             30 June 2004            31 Dec 2004
                                                                       £m                     £m

UK home credit                                                       61.1                  154.0
Yes Car Credit                                                        5.7                  (2.7)
Vanquis Bank                                                        (4.8)                  (9.0)
UK consumer credit                                                   62.0                  142.3
International
Central Europe                                                       16.3                   51.0
Mexico                                                              (1.1)                  (2.2)
Central divisional overheads                                        (4.5)                  (9.0)
Total international                                                  10.7                   39.8
Insurance                                                            16.6                   34.6
Central costs                                                       (5.3)                 (11.2)
Profit before taxation                                               84.0                  205.5

Tax rate                                                            29.7%                  29.7%

Earnings per share (pence)                                          23.32                  57.00






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