The UK’s Nationwide Building Society has reported an underlying pre-tax profit of £263m ($440m) for the three months to 30 June, the first quarter of its fiscal year 2014/15, an increase of 117% from the same period last year.
Statutory pre-tax profit was £253m, an increase of 141% year-on-year.
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Other first quarter highlights included:
- Current accounts market share increased to 6.4% from 6.2% a year ago. Nationwide has set an internal target of 10% market share of current accounts. Since 2010 it has increased its current accounts market share from 4.7%; In the three months to 30 June 2014, Nationwide opened over 110,000 new current accounts (Q1 2013/14: 103,000) and was a net beneficiary of the current account switching service, gaining 10% of gross switchers
- Net interest margin (NIM) increased by 41 basis points to 1.47%
- Nationwide’s underlying cost income ratio fell by 11.3 percentage points to 51.5% (Q1 2013/14: 62.8%)
Less positive metrics included a fall in gross mortgage lending, down £600m from last year to £5.8bn.Net mortgage lending fell even more sharply, from £2.6bn to £1.7bn.
Graham Beale, Nationwide’s Chief Executive, said:
"Following on from a robust financial performance last year, our first quarter has delivered another strong set of results. As a result, we have continued to strengthen our capital position with our CET1 ratio now standing at 16.3% and our leverage ratio increasing to 3.7%."
