Consumer finance company Cash Converters has crashed to a A$19.4 million loss for the six months to December after paying out $42 million on class action expenses.Accompanying the release of its half-year financial report yesterday, the company announced that chief executive Brendan White, who has been in the role less than a year, had resigned citing personal reasons.Sam Budiselik, who has been at the company since 2016 and was appointed chief operating officer in 2017, has been appointed to the role.It is the second year in a row that the company has been tipped into loss by class action payouts. In the December 2018 half it reported a loss of $5.2 million after paying out $16.4 million.In 2015 it paid $20 million to settle a class action over fees and charges. The claim was that deferred establishment fees charged on loans was not lawful.The company said it has now settled the last of the class actions hanging over it.The company has a loan book worth $224.5 million, which grew 1.6 per cent over the past six months. Its products include small amount credit contracts, larger personal loans and auto finance.Its business focus is "on meeting the cash needs of a growing and under-serviced market" - largely credit impaired borrowers.The bad debt expense was $19.1 million - 8.5 per cent of total loans.The company said it had a stronger focus on responsible lending, which resulted in a lower conversion rate (now below 30 per cent) and a better quality loan book. The bad debt expense was down from $23 million in the previous corresponding period.The company is investing in technology to do more of its business online. It said 53.9 per cent of loans were originated online during the half - up 4.6 percentage points compared with the previous corresponding period. It also had a 24.5 per cent increase in online sales of its second-hand goods. Total retail sales were up 12.8 per cent to $42.5 million.On a normalised basis, adjusting for the class action payouts, profit for the half was $11.5 million - an increase of 31.2 per cent over the previous corresponding period.