The lender, which launched intermediary servicing technology in early July alongside a proc fee of 0.38 bps for retention business, also drove up profit before tax by 53% to £101.8m, from £66.4m in H1 2015.
This handed the bank a gross mortgage lending market share of 3.6% and the bank will pay an interim dividend of 1.6p to shareholders.
The lender, which listed in November 2014, retains a mortgage book which is 82% residential and 18% buy to let to June 2016.
Virgin Money CEO Jayne-Anne Gadhia said: “To conclude, we are delighted that we have delivered strongly against our objectives in H1 2016 and I would like to thank our Virgin Money colleagues for their hard work and achievements so far this year. We will continue to put customers at the heart of everything we do and look to the future with confidence.”
Virgin Money’s newly-launched intermediary technology offers existing customers all front book deals as well as additional back book mortgages no longer available to new customers.
In line with the Financial Conduct Authority’s Transitional Arrangements, borrowers will not be subject to an affordability assessment if no further borrowing is taken. However, the broker will be required to indicate an assessment of the client’s circumstances has been completed.
The lender has spent the last nine months working with intermediaries to build its client retention system and in June, the lender launched a national advertising campaign to encourage customers to speak to a mortgage broker at mortgage renewal, unless they choose to go directly to Virgin Money.
The lender has ambitious market share plans and sees broker-designed systems and processes as the way to achieve this target. The lender has already driven share from 3.5% of the total market to 3.6% this year.
Virgin is also readying to roll out a digital intermediary portal with policy rules, decision-in-principle and application forms to all broker partners within months.
