This included a £400m growth in its SME loan book, supported by Shawbrook’s acquisition of ThinCats’ portfolio last year. The loan book stood at £4.8m in June, including £800m in development finance business, and represented 24% of the group’s total book.
Its real estate loan book increased by £300m to total £7.9bn, accounting for 39% of the overall book.
This included £5.1bn in buy-to-let (BTL) business, £2.4bn in commercial investment loans, and £200m in bridging finance.
The retail mortgage loan book was £6.5bn, representing 32% of the group’s loan book, and rose by £300m when adjusting for £1.3bn of originated-to-distribute transactions derecognised.
This included £1.8bn in The Mortgage Lender’s (TML’s) BTL business, £1bn in TML’s owner-occupied business, and £1.1bn in Bluestone Mortgages’ owner-occupied business.
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Some £2.5bn represented business originated to distribute.
Its consumer finance business, comprising motor finance, had a loan book valued at £1bn, representing 5% of the group’s total.
Efficiency with AI underwriting
Shawbrook said it had also been focusing on its scalable technology platform, enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI) to enable its employees to focus on more complex tasks.
The group said this was enabled by its recently acquired digital lending platform Playter, through which it provides unsecured lending to UK SMEs.
It said across its real estate business, AI-assisted underwriting was aiming to halve the time spent on underwriting tasks.
For originations, Shawbrook is aiming to produce same-day indication of terms for qualifying SME enquiries, while for real estate portfolio management, it expects AI to reduce the annual review turnaround time to less than a day.
A ‘strong first half’
Shawbrook closed the period with an underlying profit before tax of £195.5m, up from £168.6m last year, and a statutory profit before tax of £194.6m, up from £163.1m.
Marcelino Castrillo, chief executive of Shawbrook, said the group delivered a “strong first half, with disciplined execution across our specialist markets”.
He added: “We maintained credit resilience, focused new lending on the most valuable opportunities, and optimised our capital position.
“Our investment in digital and technology provides us with a platform to deliver efficient growth. The underlying cost to income ratio improved to 36.4% in H1 2026 from 40% a year earlier, as income continues to significantly outpace cost growth. This reflects deliberate choices across organisational design, our estate footprint and technology stack, increasingly enhanced by AI, with the benefits compounding over time.
“We remain focused on delivering sustainable returns for shareholders. These results reinforce our confidence in meeting our FY 2026 guidance and paying a maiden ordinary dividend in FY 2027 in respect of FY 2026 earnings.”
