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Pre-tax profits have taken a hit at a Staffordshire building society after a challenging 2020.

Leek United Building Society recorded pre-tax profits of £0.9 million for 2020, down from £2.4 million in 2019.

Bosses say the decrease – which was ‘expected’ – can be attributed to the challenges presented by the global pandemic and an investment in digital technology at its 12 branches.

But despite the fall in profit, Leek United successfully grew its mortgage balances by £15 million to £864 million from £849 million in 2019.

While total assets also increased to a record £1.15 billion – up from £1.09 billion the previous year.

In its 2020 annual report, Leek United chief executive Andrew Healy said: “As a mutual building society, we do not seek to maximise profits but to achieve a level of profitability that is sufficient to balance member value with the need to have a robust capital position to fund future investment in our business.

“The society delivered a resilient operational and capital performance in 2020 despite difficult market conditions, maintaining strong service levels and making significant progress with our investment programme while continuing to grow both our mortgage and savings books. However, as with many organisations, our short term financial performance was impacted by the economic environment and profitability is lower year-on-year.”

Mr Healy went on to explain how the society’s financial strength throughout the pandemic meant that it did not need to access any Government help or the furlough scheme and did not make any redundancies or reduce staff working hours.