Shawbrook’s loan book rises to £11.9bn in H1

The group put this down to a growth in net lending volumes across its real estate, SME and residential mortgage brands. 

Excluding the Bluestone Mortgages acquisition, the loan book rose by 21 per cent to £11.6bn. 

Shawbrook’s retail mortgage brands, comprising The Mortgage Lender (TML) and Bluestone Mortgages saw a collective 60 per cent rise in their loan books to £3.1bn. This represented 26 per cent of the group’s total loan book. 

Shawbrook said TML’s “real life lending” proposition was in high demand during the period which supported its growth. 

Looking ahead, it said the challenging market created a need for real-life lending solutions for people with complex needs. 

Shawbrook said the Bluestone acquisition allowed the group to extend its footprint and deepen its presence in existing markets. 

It said it expected “significant long-term growth” in the UK specialist market, driven by people working for themselves and having complex incomes. 

Its real estate loan book rose by 21 per cent to £5.5bn and accounted for 46 per cent of the group’s overall loan book. 

The SME loan book increased by 10 per cent to £2.7bn and the consumer lending loan book, consisting of unsecured loans, grew by 15 per cent to £500m. 

Shawbrook said it was “alert” to the challenges presented by macroeconomic uncertainty but it was yet to see any “material changes” to its credit quality. Its overall arrears rate was 1.9 per cent at the end of the period, unchanged from the six months to 31 December 2022. 

Shawbrook’s statutory profit before tax rose from £106.4m to £135.1m year-on-year. 

Its net interest margin improved from five per cent to 5.2 per cent when compared to the same period last year. 

‘Confidence to continue investing’

Marcelino Castrillo, chief executive of Shawbroook, said: “The first half of the year has again demonstrated the benefits of our business model – differentiated by our ‘best of both’ approach and fuelled by resilient and diversified funding. We continued to expand our presence across a range of carefully selected specialist markets, contributing to the sustained growth of our loan book. 

“Expanding our brand presence in the deposit market, we successfully attracted 37,000 new savings customers, increasing our retail deposit base to £12.1 billion. We have grown our liquidity levels to maintain a healthy liquidity coverage ratio as we continue to fund our lending growth.”  

He added: “The resilience and agility of the model we have created at Shawbrook gives us the confidence to continue investing in our brand, people and the propositions we offer across a diverse range of markets. The sustainable returns we generate also enable us to further scale-up our model through ongoing investment in data and technology. Our ‘best of both’ approach creates opportunities in the current volatile macroeconomic environment.”