Virgin Money has announced increased profits and higher mortgage lending for 2016.
Its profits before tax increased to £194m from £138m in the previous year, which the company has attributed to “market-beating” growth in its mortgage, savings and credit card businesses.
The challenger bank’s gross mortgage lending grew by 12 per cent to £8.4bn during 2016.
Meanwhile retail deposit balances also increased by 12 per cent to £28bn.
Jayne-Anne Gadhia, the company’s chief executive, said: “Our customer-focused strategy of growth, quality and returns continues to achieve and maintain outstanding customer approval ratings, excellent asset quality and strong financial performance.
“We continue to target high quality lending growth and the combination of strong new mortgage lending and improved customer retention resulted in 17 per cent growth in mortgage balances to £29.7bn, significantly outpacing the market.”
She said Virgin Money’s plans to build a digital bank would be “transformational” for the business.
More than 82 per cent of total sales were carried out digitally in 2016 and Ms Gadhia said the bank’s improvement of its online and mobile distribution would help it continue to serve its customers’ needs.
Despite the current prolonged period of low interest rates Virgin Money had a net interest margin of 160 basis points in 2016, which it expects to maintain during this year.
damian.fantato@ft.com
