The specialist finance provider Premium Credit is at the centre of a private equity bidding war led by the firm which owns a stake in the Six Nations Rugby championship.

Sky News understands that prolific sports investor CVC Capital Partners and Towerbrook are two of the leading contenders to buy Premium Credit for more than £600m.

Premium Credit, which allows consumers to spread the cost of insurance premiums, school fees and rail season tickets, has been put up for sale by Cinven, the buyout firm.

Cinven bought the company in 2015 for about £460m, and has been in talks with prospective buyers for several weeks.

It was unclear on Monday whether other bidders were in the frame, although Wafra, a US-based financial services group which owns a minority stake in Towerbrook, had also been named as a prospective buyer by industry sources.

Premium Credit has a customer base of more than two million people, having been founded in 1988.

The company, which is based in Surrey and Dublin, employs about 350 people.

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CVC is already a co-investor alongside Cinven in another major British financial services business: NewDay, a consumer credit provider which has partnerships with a string of leading retailers.

The two private equity firms have been preparing for a sale or flotation of NewDay, although any move to take it public is likely to be delayed following the impact of the war in Ukraine on global stock markets.

Cinven, CVC, Towerbrook and Wafra all declined to comment.

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