Door-to-door lending company Provident Financial today delivered a mixed set of results with continued troubles in its UK business offset by big growth in Central and Eastern Europe.

The Bradford-based company, which specialises in lending small sums of money to people on low incomes, saw overall profit before tax for the first six months of the year grow 6.3 per cent to £87.2 million.

But there was continued decline in its UK home credit business, which is part of the industry currently being probed by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) following a complaint filed by the National Consumer Council (NCC).

In the UK, customer numbers fell 5.2 per cent to 1.53 million and the amount of credit issued slumped 4.5 per cent to £373 million, with a small drop in profit before tax to £60.1 million.

The company said the problems were due to increased competition in the market for small sum credit, which contradicted the findings of the NCC which had raised concerns about the domination of firms such as Provident in its report.

Provident said credit card companies were increasingly targeting lower income customers and the firm had also aimed to ditch "uneconomic" customers and close sub-scale agencies. The company said: "We expect that market conditions for the UK home credit business will remain competitive and that the business will continue to see reductions in its volumes and a small reduction in profits during the second half of the year as compared to the second half of last year."

However, the picture was far more upbeat in its overseas business where it offers door-to-door lending services to customers in Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia.

Overall, customer numbers grew 28 per cent to 1.4 million and credit issues was up 29 per cent to £189 million. Profit before tax increased by 77 per cent to £15.4 million, up from £8.7 million in the same period last year.

Provident's Yes Car Credit division enjoyed very strong year-on-year growth in the first quarter but that was hit by a poor performance in June, with rising interest rates and petrol prices cited as possible reasons.

Chief executive Robin Ashton said today that he was pleased with the overall results.

He hailed the growth of the international division, which was only launched in 1997, as "remarkable" and said it showed the company was right to look overseas when it recognised that growth would be harder to come by in the UK. The company is soon expected to have more overseas than domestic customers.

Mr Ashton said the performance of the UK division reinforced the points it had made in its submission to the OFT which is expected to report the findings of its investigation in early September.