Speaking to Specialist Lending Solutions, Jon Hall, group managing director of mortgages and savings, said OSB continued the diversification of its loan book, resulting in year-on-year growth, rising 3.2% to £25.9bn.
OSB Group’s profit before tax reduced from £418.1m to £382.5m, primarily due to an impairment charge compared to an impairment credit the year before, a rise in fair value losses and higher administrative costs, with the latter rising from £258.1m to £270.1m.
The impairment charge was related to an increase in provision for accounts with arrears of three months or more and loan book growth.
He said: “To deliver that set of results with confidence across that number of lending segments takes a huge amount of expertise and hard work”, acknowledging the hard work of its team and intermediary partners, who account for 99% of its lending.
Hall said there had been “significant outperformance” in bridging, commercial and semi-commercial, as well as continued growth in specialist residential and BTL.
Its commercial lending through its Interbay brand completed £701m originations in 2025, representing a 57% uplift from the year before. Its book rose by 38% to £1.9bn, as OSB Group said it focused on “quality commercial and semi-commercial business”. The average loan to value (LTV) of the commercial book reduced from 73% to 71%.
Further, its bridging division saw originations rise 58% to £724.9m and the value of its book total £594.3m, a 63% uplift.
Adrian Moloney, group lending distribution director, said the growth in bridging and commercial was the “result of a lot of hard work”, reaching out to a wider audience and building closer relationships with experts in the market.
“We are seeing more brokers do more specialist business, that’s for sure, but [we’re] also fostering close relationships with those who specialise in the market.”
Moloney described Interbay as a “sleeping giant”, saying its growth last year was “really pleasing” and the group would focus on getting the brand out to the wider market, so more people are aware of it, with launches planned to propel this.
Hall said OSB restructuring the bridging and commercial teams and recruiting more staff helped its performance, adding: “That combination of having specialist expertise up front in sales, aligned to confidence in underwriting in those particular segments, outweighs anything we can do as a brand or even on our systems.”
“Intermediaries want expertise, real estate knowledge, the ability to structure deals, confidence in certainty,” Hall added.
Streamlining its proposition
Hall said before the new platform was introduced across BTL, brokers were being separated into eight different channels. This has now been streamlined and simplified with one login, with its residential offering to be added this year, followed by bridging and commercial in 2027.
Hall said OSB had always been “pretty consistent” and showed confidence in its delivery, made possible by its talented workforce, who are “very committed to what we are doing as a group”.
He said its financial results and performance were the consequence, adding: “You do good things and good things will happen.”
Diversification with a Rely ‘superpower’
The group’s buy-to-let (BTL) lending increased 3% to £1.9bn, comprising its OSB and CCFS businesses, representing a new market share of 4.7%. BTL mortgages still accounted for most of OSB’s portfolio, unchanged from the year before, but took up a smaller share of its total gross loan book, falling from 70% in 2024 to 68% in 2025.
The group said this was in line with its diversification strategy and higher-yielding segments made up a larger share than previously, up from 9% to 12%.
Meanwhile, OSB Group’s Heritable residential development finance business saw its gross loan book rise 31% to £343.1m, with a further £258.1m committed. By the end of 2025, the brand had committed to financing the development of 3,138 residential units.
First charge mortgages to owner-occupiers through its Kent Reliance brand contracted from £255.9m at the end of 2024 to £118.4m last year, which OSB Group said was due to its strategic decision to offer specialist residential mortgages under its Precise brand. The loan book fell by 10% in value to £1.9bn.
Last year, OSB decided to cease BTL lending through its Kent Reliance and Precise brands, with Precise to focus on residential and bridging, and offer BTL through its new lender Rely.
Hall said OSB Group wanted Rely to be a BTL “superpower”, while Moloney said the lender had been received “very positively” and 19,000 brokers were already onboarded.
Moloney said: “We probably set the blueprint in specialist lending in terms of widening distribution and our relationships, not just with individual brokers but with networks too.”
He said Rely was a new lender, not just a polishing up of Kent Reliance and Precise.
He said the turnaround times had been improved through the lender’s platform, with enhanced application to offer time frames and the ability to issue near-instant offers for the first time using automated valuation models (AVMs).
Moloney said OSB was able to reach a wider pool of intermediaries with Rely, and had been taking feedback to continue developing the brand.
He said the platform was built in-house and able to adapt quickly, with the ability to bring products to market within a few hours and be closer to the ground.
As for its residential offering, Moloney added: “I like to think we do what we do really well. If we continue to be consistent and reliable, I’m genuinely looking forward to what we can do with Precise residential and the new platform this year.”
Moloney said once this has been introduced successfully, “it will be a game-changer. Not just for us, but [it] will really add value to our broker partners”.
Moloney said it was in the design phase of its planned residential launches, with brokers scheduled to meet the lender this month to test the system and give feedback.
He added: “We’ve already made some really good improvements in the last 12 months. We’re in the highest part of the LTV [space] at 90% and 95% LTV, we’ve expanded the maximum term and improved interest-only. We’ve done all of this on the legacy platform, but the experience will be even better once we get onto the new one.”
Hall said: “We’ve refreshed and invested in our proposition, but fundamentally it’s the same offer. What we’re doing is just leveraging the strong relationships that we have with the intermediaries, using those panels and making those lending types available to a wider group of intermediaries.
“That, I think, is a really interesting trend, to see intermediaries themselves talk about becoming more specialist and diversified as well. We are the place that delivers that… from a single access point.”
