Abbey takes 26% of mortgages
Tuesday, 29 Jul 2008 09:05
Abbey targets remortgage customers with high LTVs
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Abbey now accounts for 26 per cent of the mortgage market, the lender revealed today.
The bank saw its market share grow as other lenders stepped away from the mortgage market amid the credit crunch.
Abbey said its growth came from high loan-to-value mortgages and remortgages with higher margins than a year ago.
Some 63 per cent of mortgage lending was on remortgage deals, compared with 48 per cent last year, and 60 per cent of Abbey's own customers remortgaging took fixed-rate deals of over three years.
Only one per cent of the firm's new mortgages in the last three months were 90 per cent LTV deals.
António Horta-Osório, Abbey chief executive, said: "We held back our market share during the first-half of last year when the market was writing low margin and higher-risk business.
"Since then the market has reduced and we have taken the opportunity to take higher margin, low-risk business, and at the same time improving our customer retention."
He added the bank would continue to target lower LTV mortgages to reduce risk.
Savings at the Spanish-owned bank rose seven per cent in the first half of the year with 258,000 new accounts opened.