Principality Building Society has seen its assets grow by £11bn for th first time in its history.
Wales’ largest building society also announced in its annual results that its retail mortgage lending increased by £182m this year, from £499m in 2019, taking total retail lending to more than £8bn for the first time, despite the 海角视频 housing market coming to a standstill for the best part of four months in the first half of the year.
Principality says that while it has strong capital reserves its prudent approach had a significant impact on results for 2020, resulting in an underlying profit before tax of £24.1m, down from £39.8m in 2019, and statutory profit before tax of £19.9m, down from £39.6m in 2019.
Principality described its annual results for 2020 as “good”, and said it had focused all its efforts on supporting members, customers and colleagues during the challenging year.
The building society granted more than 15,000 homeowners a mortgage payment deferral, in a bid to help them to cope with the financial uncertainty created by the Covid-19 pandemic, and supported communities by keeping its branches open throughout the lockdown periods.
Last year the business signposted an expected reduction in profits in 2020 due to continued investment in technology to transform its core mortgage and savings operations. In addition, it also increased provision levels by £9.1m to cover potential future losses arising from the economic downturn caused by the pandemic.
While it says no significant credit losses have been incurred to date, Principality recognises that some customers may experience financial difficulties over the next few years, and its conservative approach takes into account economic forecasts of factors including unemployment levels and property prices.
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CEO Julie-Ann Haines said: “Despite facing significant disruption and uncertainty this year, we maintained our award-winning customer service and delivered essential service for our members when they needed us most.
“During the first half of the year we had to deal with a number of operational challenges, not least enabling around 800 colleagues from our head office to work effectively from home. The strength and resilience of our business has allowed us to keep everyone in employment and not to furlough anyone. We strive to create a friendly, open and inclusive culture, and our colleagues continue to make us stand out in the sector with their warmth, personal approach and empathy.
“As promised last year, we continued to invest previous profits back into the business to boost our technology so we could offer our members improvements to their customer service. Our enhanced online security has made members’ accounts more secure, and a new web chat function has been added to improve the customer experience. In response to customer feedback, we have also increased the range of products available to customers online. Our ambition is to move at pace in the next few years and we will continue to invest in the Society to improve our proposition and offer greater flexibility to our members. This will be complemented by fantastic service through our branches in Wales and along the borders with England.”
On the outlook for 2021 Ms Haines added: “Our strategy and long term priorities remain unchanged and, while our immediate focus remains on helping members, colleagues and communities through these uncertain times, we are committed to developing and growing our business in a safe and sustainable way.”