“More than a simple payday advance company”
May 11, 2009 | Tennessee, customers, industry, media coverage, positive media coverage | Comments (1)Must read of the day. Great profile of a family-owned payday lending company in Tennessee:
The Hodges — both Middle Tennessee natives — founded their company in 1996 as Advance Payday. For the first 10 years of its existence, the business was difficult to differentiate from the crowd. It offered payday advances like so many others in its market and in environs not drastically different from its competitors.
In 2006, the couple made the decision to expand Advance’s menu and become “more than a simple payday advance company” and set itself apart from the rabble by getting closer to its communities. They formed focus groups to determine what its customers were looking for both in terms of service and products.
From the groups, Advance learned that most customers of this sort of financial services company were forced to “ping pong” from vendor to vendor looking for other products. As with Advance Payday, most players in the space specialize in a specific product. TitleMax, for example is primarily focused on providing short-term loans against the value of the customer’s car.
The industry lacked a one-stop shop.
With this in mind, the Hodges changed the name of their company to Advance Financial, expanded its hours, drastically redesigned their point-of-sale system, expanded product offerings and remodeled all of their stores, a process now nearing completion.
“We wanted to have the look and feel of any other place you would go to do business,” said Tina Hodges.
The company now offers more than a dozen services from payday advances to bill payment services, pre-paid local phone service, tax-preparation and tax-refund loans, as well as auto insurance.
Comments»
Great story.
In the UK we’ve been running a company for the last 9 years, we have just updated our website Simple Payday and now offer more aprovals than any other provider in the UK market.
Simple Payday is an ever expanding company and we take inspiration from other people in business doing well.