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Pre-tax profit up for Leeds Building Society
LEEDS Building Society has seen its pre-tax profit for 2011 increase by 19 per cent to £50.2m.
Savings balances also grew by £329m to a record level of £7.4bn.
The Society has also attracted 58,000 new members, taking its total membership to 691,000.
Chief executive Peter Hill said: “Leeds Building Society has again delivered an excellent set of financial results and provided even more capacity in the UK mortgage market, especially to first-time-buyers.
“I am particularly pleased that my first results as chief executive saw record operating profit, and our membership and savings balances reached their highest ever levels.
“We also saw new mortgage lending increase by 25 per cent, to £1.23bn, which is one and half times our natural market share.
“Our prudent approach to underwriting continued and, even when taking into account our lending to first-time buyerss, the average loan-to-value on our new lending was only 51 per cent in 2011.
“Savings balances rose by £329m to a record £7.4bn. This represents £156m above our natural building society market share, with 41,000 new saving customers attracted by the security and value we provide. Our success in attracting deposits means that all of the Society’s residential mortgage balances are funded entirely by members’ savings.
“We achieved our highest ever operating profit of £102.4m, which is £17.9m higher than last year’s record of £84.5m, and an increase of 21 per cent compared to 2010. After impairment losses and provisions, our pre-tax profit was £50.2m, an increase of 19 per cent compared to the previous year.”
Mr Hill added that despite household budgets being squeezed in 2011 with high inflation and rising unemployment, residential arrears reduced from 3.25 per cent in 2010 to 3.23 per cent.
He said: “We work closely with those borrowers experiencing financial difficulty, offering a range of forbearance strategies including payment arrangements, term extensions, changes to repayment type and alternative mortgage products.”
Mr Hill added: “Leeds Building Society is both independent and successful, with a strong capital base and has been consistently profitable, despite the challenging environment. Throughout the downturn, we have continued to invest in the business and be an active player in the savings and mortgage markets, the benefits of which can be clearly seen in our results. We are in an excellent position to continue to focus on doing what we do best: providing good value for money products backed up by excellent service, delivered by our highly professional staff throughout this year and beyond.”
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