Nationwide Building Society saw profits more than double amid higher lending margins on mortgages approved during the pandemic, the lender has revealed.
It said pre-tax profits for the six months to the end of September hit £853 million compared with £361 million a year earlier.
The bank explained it was driven by its decision to keep lending at the start of the pandemic while rivals pulled back.
Nationwide is the second-biggest mortgage lender in the UK after Lloyds, with gross mortgage lending during the period rising by £5.5 billion to £18.2 billion, although its market share fell slightly from 12% to 11.4%.
More than £5 billion was lent to first-time buyers, the bank added.
Profits were also boosted by the release of £34 million of the £139 million held back in provisions during the pandemic.
Chief executive Joe Garner said: "Early in the pandemic we made decisions to stand by our members and to protect our financial strength."
He added: "Over the last six months we have focused on providing highly competitive products for our mortgage and savings members.
"These have been very popular, resulting in a successful ISA season, increased deposits, higher mortgage lending, and a larger share of the current account market."
Net interest margins rose from 1.15% to 1.24%, although finance chief Chris Rhodes said the higher levels would fall back over time and were "a bit of a one-off".
He added: "During the pandemic, strong demand for mortgages, coupled with macro-economic uncertainty, led to higher margins on mortgage lending.
"This resulted in significantly higher income, and a very strong overall financial performance.
"Net interest margin improved, but is unlikely to be sustained at this level in future due to intense competition in the mortgage market."
The lender's ISA savings products also performed strongly and deposits rose by £7.1 billion in the period.
Tait Bros in hunt for new Borders home
The brothers behind a Scottish vermouth have started surveying locations for a new headquarters following a successful £120,000 crowdfunding campaign.
Free digital skills boost for over 25s
Up to 20,000 people across Scotland will be able to learn new skills including digital technology, finance and design through free digital learning.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here