The lender said it completed mortgages for approximately 20,000 customers in the six months to end-June and that its mortgage application process is now significantly quicker.
TSB noted that the competitive mortgage market had impacted net interest margin, which fell to 2.76 per cent in H1 2019, down from 2.82 per cent in the comparable period H1 2018 and from 2.92 per cent in H2 2018.
The gross mortgage lending figure compares to H1 2018, when TSB was set back significantly by a technology failure. In that period, the bank advanced £2.6bn of new mortgages, a sharp drop from £4.1bn in H1 2017.
Return to profitability
The bank returned to profitability in H1 2019, with a statutory profit before tax of £21.1m versus a loss of £107.4m in H1 2018.
The bank revealed that IT incidents were in line with the industry and that it had cleared all complaints from the migration failure, which cost the bank a further 36.2m in the last six months.
“We’ve addressed all customer complaints in relation to migration and new customer complaints are at industry levels,” it said.
The mortgage portfolio loan-to-value remained at 44.0 per cent, excluding the closed book of former Northern Rock mortgages which TSB purchased in April 2017.
The total loan book increased £400m to £30.4bn and total customer deposits increased £700m to £29.8bn.
Challenging and uncertain conditions
“GDP growth is expected to be flat in the second quarter of the year and the UK economic and market conditions continue to remain challenging and uncertain,” TSB said.
“The UK’s pending exit from the EU and an ongoing low interest rate environment all contribute to ongoing ambiguity for financial markets and businesses.
“TSB is one of the most strongly capitalised banks in the country and, by maintaining a healthy liquidity reserve, is well placed to weather economic volatility or shocks.
“In the second half of the year, TSB will continue to focus on business improvement and deliver a long-term plan for growth,” it added.
