Dan Rees, announced as CEO on Monday, led retail banking at Scotiabank from 2019 to 2023.Denise Jones Productions Inc./Supplied
Alternative lender Goeasy Ltd. GSY-T has named Dan Rees as its chief executive officer, turning to an experienced retail banker to lead an expansion plan at a time when Canadians are facing rising financial stress.
Mr. Rees, announced as CEO on Monday, spent nearly 25 years at Bank of Nova Scotia, where he led the Canadian banking division. He is the first Goeasy CEO to be hired from outside the Mississauga-based company.
Goeasy provides loans to people who have bruised or lower credit scores, and struggle to qualify with the Big Six banks and other major lenders.
Mr. Rees led retail banking at Scotiabank from 2019 to 2023 and was a top candidate to be the bank’s CEO, before the lender surprised the industry by choosing one of its own board members, Scott Thomson, as its leader.
After Mr. Rees left Scotiabank late in 2023, he said he looked for a role at a public company in financial services where he could apply his experience in lending.
Goeasy is a fraction of Scotiabank’s size, but growing rapidly in a lending niche that is becoming increasingly mainstream. The company has made more than $16-billion of loans to about 1.5 million customers, and has a current loan portfolio worth $4.6-billion as of the end of 2024.
The company’s customers are a subset of some nine million Canadians that have non-prime credit scores – also called subprime or near-prime borrowers. It has more than 400 branches in Canada, in every province and major city.
“There’s a level of pride that the company has, and that I share, with regards to providing appropriate, well-priced access to credit for Canadians who deserve it,” Mr. Rees said in an interview.
Goeasy has a target to increase its loan book to between $7-billion and $8-billion by 2027, with plans to launch a credit card later this year and to boost its book of car loans. It is also considering whether to add loans to small businesses in the future.
“It was the right time to bring in someone that’s done this before, introduced new products before and has the experience to know, from past mistakes and successes and wins, how to make the right judgement calls,” said executive chair and interim CEO David Ingram in an interview. “We needed someone that could take us to the next level.”
Mr. Ingram was Goeasy’s CEO from 2000 to 2018, and stepped into the interim role in January after his successor, Jason Mullins, moved to the company’s board of directors.
Goeasy is expanding at a fraught moment for Canada’s economy, with loan applications up 30 per cent year over year. The threat of U.S. tariffs to be imposed on Tuesday is set to put pressure on the job market, and could boost demand for Goeasy loans, especially as major banks tighten their lending criteria.
Economic turmoil could also put pressure on the company’s credit portfolio, creating the potential for higher losses on loans. Mr. Ingram said that, counterintuitively, non-prime borrowers typically have lower rates of default in downturns because they carry less debt than prime borrowers with mortgages and other large obligations.
“Delinquency rates have held up very well so far,” he said. “The biggest concern will be about how to manage the consumers through what could be a period of reinflation.”
Goeasy had “a strong quarter” to close out 2024, with improving profit and charge-offs on loans “that should calm investor concerns regarding the credit picture and uncertainty regarding tariffs,” National Bank Financial analyst Jaeme Gloyn said in a note to clients.
The typical Goeasy borrower has an income of about $60,000 a year, and the company mostly provides term loans and auto loans of $5,000 to $15,000, as well as pay-as-you-go services for merchants. For loans that are secured by property, the company will lend as much as $50,000 to a customer.
It charges annual interest rates ranging from 9.9 per cent to the government-mandated limit of 35 per cent.
Its main competitor is Fairstone Financial Inc., a Canadian personal lender owned by billionaire financier Stephen Smith.