West Bromwich Building Society has increased its residential mortgage lending by 18%, particularly to first-time buyers as it reports pre-tax profits of £8.8m.
Gross residential mortgage advances hit £837m with lending to first-timers at £265m for the year, the highest in the building society’s history, according to its annual results.
West Brom chief executive Jonathan Westhoff, said: “Pivotal to the West Brom’s success is our focus on lending to customers to support their plans for home ownership, which has grown for the fifth year in succession.
“We have responded to customer demand to assist first-time buyers by increasing our maximum loan to value ratio to 95%. We also added a government-backed Help to Buy ISA account to our savings portfolio for those who want to buy their own home but still need time to raise a deposit.
“With the society’s new lending to first-time buyers now at record levels, our commitment to this market sector is clear to see,” he added.
Technology advances
The West Brom is the UK’s seventh largest building society with 37 branches and around 434,000 members.
Westhoff said: “New technology and the drive to digitalisation must be firmly on our radar. This is a challenge we are already responding to so that our overall proposition continues to meet the needs of our members, both present and future.”
Victoria Hartley is contributing editor at Mortgage Solutions, Specialist Lending Solutions, Your Money and Your Mortgage at London-based publishing company AE3 Media.
She has an MA in Radio from Goldsmiths after gaining a 2:1 in a Comparative American Studies BA at Warwick University. She also holds a TEFL qualification and taught overseas in Mexico and Japan from 1994 to 1997.
Her role includes editorial oversight of the news, analysis and features, event content management and strategic and editorial consultancy for the AE3 Media group. She is an experienced video, broadcast and live-event host and regularly chairs web and podcast debates and interviews.
Multiple award nominations have resulted in two wins: Santander Media Awards, trade journalist of the year and Headlinemoney Awards, mortgage journalist of the year (B2B). Here is one of the award-winning pieces: https://www.mortgagesolutions.co.uk/news/2011/07/21/exclusive-tale-bailey-fraud-witness/
Previous roles include editorships of Mortgage Solutions, consumer title What Mortgage and trade title Credit Today as well as a stint freelancing for a variety of outlets including The Guardian and Which? Money.
