Member Article

Mortgage lending boosts Leeds and Skipton Building Societys' impressive results

Leeds and Skipton Building Society’s have reported stellar year results which the firms say are down to an increase in mortgage lending.

New residential mortgage lending increased by 24% to £2.7 billion (£2.2 billion 2013), for Leeds, significantly above their market share.

The Building society hit a pretax profit of £87.9 million for the year 2014, a marked increase on 2013 when their pretx profit stood at £64.2 million.

69,000 new members were attracted, taking total membership to a record 721,000 (714,000 2013) and the firm has also employed a further 100 people this year.

Skipton Building Society continued to grow with a 31,276 increase in members, taking their membership to 794,739, and the firm’s mortgage book grew by £1.3 billion to £12.7 billion (2013: £11.4 billion), an annual growth rate of 11.2% (2013: 9.2%).

Profit before tax for Skipton increased by over £50 million from £102.7 million in 2013 to £156.8 million

Leeds Building Society chief executive Peter Hill said: “These achievements illustrate how our growth strategy - including investing in the best talent and modernising our brand and the ways in which we can meet our members’ needs - is enabling us to compete with larger rivals to attract more savers and borrowers in a challenging marketplace.

“I am pleased to report that we continue to attract mortgage business well above our market share1 and in 2014 we helped more than 7,800 First Time Buyers to step onto the property ladder, accounting for over a third of our total lending by value.”

Skipton Group chief executive David Cutter said: “We strive to deliver excellent customer service and I would like to thank all our people for their commitment and engagement in making this happen throughout 2014.

“The Society continues to invest across all channels so customers can interact through the channel of their choice”.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clare Burnett .