“I want to thank our intermediary partners who’ve worked with us to deliver another year of robust growth,” he said.
“We’re doing what we’re here to do – providing access to competitive mortgages in a responsible and sustainable way. Our consistent out-performance of the market shows that we’re focusing on the right things – great value mortgages and fantastic service for borrowers and intermediaries alike.”
In 2018, profit before tax at the seventh largest UK lender was £202m down from £243m in 2017, but the society maintained its risk based capital measure at 35.5%.
Parsons added: “In the mortgage market we grew balances by nine per cent, over three times the growth in the market. This, in a very price competitive environment which has seen sustained pressure on mortgage pricing despite increases in the Bank of England Base Rate.”
He said: “Despite the pressure on mortgage pricing, we have maintained the low risk approach to lending that is right for our members and that has been our hallmark for many years.”
The mutual, which is now the second largest UK building society after Nationwide, restated its belief in independent mortgage advice in its results, no doubt helping its emergence in first place in the Charterhouse annual research of broker satisfaction.
This year Coventry continued work to upgrade its core technology platform with the first migrations completing in 2018.
It said: “The analysis has identified that if we want to maintain and increase service flexibility this programme is likely to be a bigger endeavour for the Society than originally indicated and we are currently reviewing options to deliver on our objectives whilst reducing the cost and risk of the upgrade.”
The society’s savings deposit balances grew by £2.3bn to £33.3bn, or growth of 7%, more than two and a half times the rate of the market with an average savings rate of 1.50% against an industry average of 0.78%.
