The Paragon Group of Companies, Paragon Mortgages' parent company, today announced its preliminary results for the year ending 30 September 2010. Paragon said the results highlight the excellent progress made by the Group, including improving the credit quality of the portfolio, expanding new business activities and returning to lending in the buy-to-let market.
Highlights include:
• Profit before tax of £71.8 million (2009: £54.3 million)
• Strong buy-to-let distribution roll out
• Encouraging application flow levels
• Strong and improving arrears performance – significantly below market peers
Commenting, John Heron said: “We have been very encouraged by the initial phase of our return to new lending and have had a great response from both landlord investors and mortgage intermediaries. This underlines the strength of Paragon’s reputation in the buy-to-let market and also the shortage of funding in the sector, particularly for landlords with more complex needs.
“We have managed the roll-out of our distribution network prudently, carefully and successfully to ensure that we could effectively manage business flows and maintain our customer service levels. We are confident that we have comprehensive intermediary coverage and we are working with the larger commercial finance specialist intermediaries, national mortgage advice firms and major regional intermediaries. We also have agreements in place or under development with the majority of major networks.”
