This is up from £2.4bn in 2013 as Skipton grew its total mortgage book by £1.3bn to £12.7bn, largely driven by intermediaries.
The group reported a 75% increase in profit before tax to £181.6m, with the sale of subsidiaries including Homeloan Management in November, Private Health Partnership in July and Torquil Clark in September among others generating a combined profit of £25.8m.
Bailey Computer Services ceased to be a provider of IT services to four other building societies and became dormant towards the end of the year following data migrations to other IT suppliers.
The society increased its membership by 31,276 to 794,739 over the year and savings balances grew by £1.2bn to £11.4bn.
David Cutter, Skipton’s group chief executive, said: “Our vision is ‘Building a Better Society’, and so much was achieved during 2014 towards making this a reality. It remains a difficult environment for savers, with Bank Base Rate held at 0.5% for six years, but it is pleasing to report growth of more than 11% in both savings and mortgage balances, well in excess of market growth, demonstrating a balanced performance and our competitive pricing. I am delighted that Skipton was ranked the third highest financial services provider in the UK for the level of customer experience excellence.”
Skipton helped 2,946 first time buyers and 19,512 homeowners in total last year to purchase or remortgage their properties, including 667 through participation in the Government’s ‘Help to Buy’ equity loan scheme.
Skipton said the rental market remained strong and £323m of its new lending was on buy-to-let mortgages, although this was down from £411m the previous year.
The mutual’s intermediary lending charter launched last year banned dual pricing against advisers, promised not to cross-sell home insurance to broker customers, offer five days warning before pulling products and better communications.
The lnders also raised its procuration fee to 0.4% for both Directly Authorised and Appointed Representative advisers on 5 January this year.
Profit before tax from the mortgage and savings divisions rose 91% to £98.4m.
Skipton reported the percentage of cases in Amber Homeloans and North Yorkshire Mortgages where the arrears balance was greater than 2.5% of the total outstanding balance at 31 December 2014 were 5.00% and 3.65% respectively.
In April, the Society completed its third securitisation through Darrowby No.3 plc, raising £400m of funds and the Society drew down £650m under the Government’s Funding for Lending Scheme over the year.
