CURO and MetaBank® Announce Agreement to Offer Consumers an Innovative and Flexible Line of Credit

CURO Group Holdings Corp. (NYSE: CURO) ("CURO” or the "Company”), a leader in providing short-term credit to underbanked consumers, today announced that it will begin offering consumers within the United States an innovative and flexible line of credit product. The offering is the result of a new relationship with MetaBank^®; a wholly owned subsidiary of Meta Financial Group, Inc.^® (NASDAQ: CASH) ("Meta”) and a leader in delivering innovative payment, community banking and financing solutions to partners throughout the country.

CURO and Meta form a relationship with diverse and deep experience serving underbanked consumers across a variety of products and platforms. With this initial product structure, the parties seek to provide consumers access to the credit they need with the ability to control their cost of borrowing with straight-forward fees that only apply when credit is drawn. Consumers are expected to be able to access credit in increments that align with their individual needs, while enjoying flexibility in the time they need to repay the credit line. It is anticipated that there would be principal repayments built into every minimum payment and responsible credit limits based on robust underwriting criteria.

"This relationship expands Meta’s longstanding commitment to serving consumers across the credit spectrum,” said Brent Turner, Meta EVP and Head of Consumer Lending. "We believe Meta’s experience in specialty consumer lending and payments products, combined with CURO’s 20 years of proven experience providing credit to underbanked consumers, will result in a product and platform that drives innovation, transparency and responsible credit to the market.”

CURO and Meta expect to finalize supporting agreements and diligence in the second quarter of 2018 and then structure a pilot launch. The program partnership agreement outlines that Meta will hold up to $350 million of product receivables on its balance sheet for the first three years of the partnership.

"We are very excited to announce this agreement with Meta,” said Don Gayhardt, President and CEO of CURO. "We believe the relationship with Meta will further expand our addressable market in the US, and we are pleased to introduce consumers to another credit product with flexibility and transparent pricing.”

About CURO

CURO Group Holdings Corp. (NYSE: CURO), operating in three countries and powered by its fully integrated technology platform, is a market leader by revenues in providing short-term credit to underbanked consumers. In 1997, the Company was founded in Riverside, California by three Wichita, Kansas childhood friends to meet the growing consumer need for short-term loans. Their success led to opening stores across the United States and expanding to offer online loans and financial services across three countries. Today, CURO combines its market expertise with a fully integrated technology platform, omni-channel approach and advanced credit decisioning to provide an array of short-term credit products across all mediums. CURO operates under a number of brands including Speedy Cash, Rapid Cash, Cash Money, LendDirect, Avío Credit, WageDayAdvance, Juo Loans, and Opt+. With over 20 years of operating experience, CURO provides financial freedom to the underbanked.

About Meta Financial Group

Meta Financial Group, Inc. ("Meta") is the holding company for MetaBank^®, a federally chartered savings bank. Meta shares of common stock are traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market® under the symbol CASH. Headquartered in Sioux Falls, S.D., MetaBank operates in both the Banking and Payments industries through: MetaBank, its community banking operation; Meta Payment Systems, its electronic payments division; AFS/IBEX, its commercial insurance premium financing division; and Refund Advantage, EPS Financial and Specialty Consumer Services, its tax-related financial solutions divisions. More information is available at metafinancialgroup.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include statements related to our expectations as to the benefits consumers may receive from this new credit product, our belief that the relationship with Meta and the new credit product will drive innovation, transparency and responsible credit to the market, our expectations as to the timing of finalizing agreements and pilot launch and our belief that this relationship will further expand our addressable market in the US. In addition, words such as "as "guidance,” "estimate,” "anticipate,” "believe,” "forecast,” "step,” "plan,” "predict,” "focused,” "project,” "is likely,” "expect,” "intend,” "should,” "will,” "confident,” variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Our ability to achieve these forward-looking statements is based on certain assumptions and judgments, including our ability to execute on our business strategy, the effectiveness of our relationship with Meta and the reaction and acceptance rate of consumers to this new credit product. These assumptions and judgments may prove to be inaccurate in the future. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict with regard to timing, extent, likelihood and degree of occurrence. There are important factors both within and outside of our control that could cause the Company’s actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These factors include our level of indebtedness; our dependence on third-party lenders to provide the cash we need to fund our loans and our ability to affordably access third-party financing; our ability to protect our proprietary technology and analytics and keep up with that of our competitors; disruption of our information technology systems that adversely affect our business operations; ineffective pricing of the credit risk of our prospective or existing customers; inaccurate information supplied by customers or third parties would could lead to errors in judging customers’ qualifications to receive loans; improper disclosure of customer personal data; failure or third parties who provide products, services or support to us; any failure of third-party-lenders upon whom we rely to conduct business in certain states; disruption to our relationships with banks and other third-part electronic payment solutions providers; disruption caused by employee or third-party theft and errors in our stores as well as other factors discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Given these risks and uncertainties, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual future results. We undertake no obligation to update, amend or clarify any forward-looking statement for any reason.

(CURO-NWS)

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180430006202/en/