Home Credit Logo PNG
Home Credit grew out of PPF, the investment fund founded in 1991 by Petr Kellner during Czechoslovakia’s shift to a market economy. PPF used voucher privatization to build one of the country’s largest private investment groups, then moved into consumer finance as Eastern Europe opened to retail credit.
In 1997, PPF launched Home Credit a.s. in the Czech Republic with 33 employees. The company introduced point-of-sale loans in shops, mainly for electronics and household goods. Customers could apply at the counter and receive an answer within minutes, without visiting a bank or finding guarantors. In 1999, the model expanded to Slovakia.
In 2002, Home Credit entered Russia, where retail lending was still limited, and banks rarely served borrowers without collateral. By 2007, it had become Russia’s second-largest consumer lender after Sberbank. During the same period, the company expanded into Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus, while PPF later built Air Bank in the Czech Republic.
From 2007, Home Credit shifted toward Asia, entering China and receiving a full consumer finance license in 2010, the first granted to a foreign company in that segment. It later expanded to India in 2012, Indonesia and the Philippines in 2013, Vietnam and the United States in 2014-2015, the latter through a Sprint smartphone-financing partnership. By 2019, its total customer base exceeded 130 million. That year, PPF prepared a Hong Kong IPO, but valuation talks failed. In 2021, Kellner died in a helicopter crash in Alaska, and PPF Group passed under family control led by Jiří Šmejc.
Meaning and History
What is Home Credit?
This is a consumer finance company operating in many European and Asian countries. The company specializes in providing easily accessible financial services to individuals, such as low-income groups and first-time borrowers, who lack access to traditional banks. The brand’s main offerings are point-of-sale loans, cash loans, credit cards, and revolving credit lines. The company has established itself in developing countries, where it often partners with merchants to offer instant financing for the purchase of consumer goods. Using a data-driven methodology to assess credit risk, the company can serve customers that traditional banks would reject.
1997 – 2009
2009 – 2017
2017 – today
