The lender said that the fall was mainly due to the continued run off and maturity of its legacy product set, as well as its bridge to let offering being created and launched.
It continued that the pipeline of its new business “remains strong” and it expected the loan balance of the property division to grow in the coming financial year.
The report said that it expected to originate over £120m in the second half of the year.
The bank’s profit before tax has however risen from £800,000 in 2020 to £3.6m in 2021.
It added that in the first five months of this year the business has delivered an unaudited profit before tax of £4.1m.
The lender also announced that it will invest and introduce a property origination platform, which it said would “transform” how it delivers its specialist property proposition to brokers and help its entry into the regulated bridging market.
Martin Bischoff (pictured), chief executive officer at Castle Trust Bank, said that its property business was “remarkably resilient” despite the pandemic, and that its sales team had returned from furlough in late 2020.
He continued: “I am impressed by how quickly we reconnected with our intermediaries, agents and surveyors to grow our lending pipeline. By the second half of the year, as the environment normalised, we had a strong pipeline and run rate ready to deliver our ambitious 2022 origination volumes.”
Bischoff added that CTB had successfully introduced its bridge to let product, which enables landlords to complete light refurbishment work then switch to a buy-to-let mortgage when the work is completed. This allows the landlord to increase a property’s value more easily.
He said that its strong end-of-year results showed that the firm had delivered more profit at the start of this year than the whole of the prior year, which he said “demonstrates our ability to scale whilst remaining profitable”.
Bischoff noted: “We are on track to deliver a profit before tax in 2022 which is more than treble last year’s. This is all down to the continuous investment we are making in digital technologies and our fintech expertise that enables us to provide our customers with seamless journeys.”
