Gross mortgage advances totalled £2.5bn representing 3.8% of new mortgages in the UK and just over 18% of all mortgage lending undertaken by building societies and mutual banks.
Coventry confirmed that in excess of 90% of its mortgage lending has been via brokers and said the mutual’s strategy was to grown its mortgage business with the help of intermediaries.
Kevin Purvey, head of intermediary sales at Coventry, said most of the society’s residential lending focused on a loan to value around 60% while its buy-to-let lending was up to 75% LTV.
Excluding the impact of those assets acquired from the UK businesses of the Bank of Ireland, mortgage balances grew by £1.3bn or 7%.
This was equivalent to 45% of all net mortgage lending in the UK and means that since the start of 2010 Coventry has accounted for approaching one quarter of UK net mortgage lending.
The mutual also highlighted that it is the only UK high street building society, or bank, not to have suffered a ratings agency downgrade in the past three years – maintaining its A rating from Fitch and Moody’s.
Its core tier 1 capital ratio is the highest in the mutual sector at 21.9% while it claims to be the most cost efficient mutual with a cost to mean assets ratio of just 0.37%.
This effectively means it passes on the margin it makes on mortgages to higher savings rates for its members.
Its mortgage book is also performing well with impairment charges of £4.3m on a book totalling in excess of £21bn. Its arrears rates are also half that of the industry average with 0.8% of its book more than 2.5% in arrears.
Purvey said: “All of this shows the strength of Coventry as a mutual and means that we have been successful in raising funding through securitisation and covered bonds as well as savings.”
The mutual also reported that savings balances grew to a record £19.3bn and its profit before tax rose 17% to £52.8bn.
David Stewart, chief executive at the mutual, said: “Coventry continues to make strong progress building on the excellent record established since the onset of the credit crisis.
“I remain confident that the Society is well positioned to continue to prosper in what is still an uncertain economic environment.”
