Santander's half-year pre-tax profits up 10%

29 July 2010 0:00 am | Updated: 29 July 2010 9:51 am | By Paul Thomas

Santander UK has recorded a half-year pre-tax profit of £875m, up 10 per cent on the £790m recorded this time last year.

Gross mortgage lending increased 14 per cent, rising from £10.8bn in the first half of 2009 to £12.3bn in the first half of 2010. Santander estimates it now has a 19.1 per cent share of the mortgage market, up from 16.3 per cent in the first half of 2009 but down from 20.4 per cent in the second half of 2009.

Revenue grew 6 per cent, increasing from £2.42bn to £2.57bn, with 519,000 new customer accounts opened.

Commercial deposits grew 11 per cent. Loan-to-deposit funding ratio improved by more than 8 per cent to 124 per cent.

The average loan-to-value on new business completions in the first half of 2010 decreased slightly to 61 per cent compared with 64 per cent in the second half of 2009.

Santander UK chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio says: “We have had growth across all areas of the business demonstrating that our transformation into a full-service commercial bank is progressing successfully. Santander provided one-in-five UK mortgage and increased our lending to SMEs by over 20 per cent, albeit from a small market share.”

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