Nationwide’ s new chief executive has said he is unworried by Brexit and has seen no change so far in the behaviour of the mutual’ s 15million customers.
Joe Garner said that despite a squeeze on profits and margins, he had “ a lot of confidence in the UK and how it can cope with the future around Brexit and I have confidence in our customers”.
Mr Garner, the former BT Openreach chief who took over this year, went on: “The world is very focused on rates and ratios at the moment but the key for us, as a mutual which can take a long-term view, is to support the housing market and offer value to savers.
"We have seen no change in our customers’ behaviour since the Leave vote.” He said it was "a strong start o the year".
The society’s statutory profit of £401m (down 5.4per cent) and underlying profit of £368m (down six per cent) were both flattered by a one-off £100m gain from the sale of its stake in Visa Europe (sold to US Visa). It follows several years of large jumps in profit for the mutual and Mr Garner said the group was now making “enough profit” for its needs.
The interest rate margin fell from 1.61 to 1.35per cent but finance director Mark Rennison said it was still way above the 0.8per cent of seven years ago.
Nationwide said it would pass on last week’s 0.25per cent base rate cut to its mortgage customers, and would reprieve its regular savings accounts and help-to-buy Isa from the cut.
Mr Garner said: “We are really keen to promote the savings habit so will reward regular savers... we don’t want a generation coming through thinking there is no point saving. “We also pay our members higher interest on their accounts than the big banks.”
The society grabbed more than half of the market for new loans in the quarter, as demand was inflated by buy-to-let borrowers scrambling to avoid tax rises.
Gross mortgage lending was up 26per cent to £8.6bn, equating to a market share of 15per cent, savings deposits jumped by £2.6bn, and new current account openings were up 21 per cent to 139,000, a 15 per cent share of the switching market.
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