£13.2m was lent every working hour by Nationwide

Nationwide has posted a surge in profits

The customer-owned group said new mortgage lending leapt 37 per cent to £14bn in the six months to September 30, meaning £13.2m was lent every working hour as Government initiatives such as Help to Buy fuel a housing market revival.

A rush of customers switching their current accounts to the mutual also helped drive a robust first-half performance, with underlying operating profits up 155 per cent to £332m.

Nationwide said it opened more than 214,000 new current accounts and saw 54,000 customers switch to the group.

It said its share of new mortgage lending rose to 15.4 per cent from 14.4 per cent a year earlier, while net lending – loans, less repayments – leapt 75 per cent to £5.6bn, giving it an 81.8 per cent share.

Graham Beale, chief executive of Nationwide, hailed an “excellent” first half and said the group was on track for a “strong performance for the rest of the financial year”.

He admitted the sector was being helped by access to cheap finance through the state-backed Funding for Lending scheme, as well as economy-boosting measures under quantitative easing (QE).

But he added that the group was also successfully attracting customers from high street banking rivals, with its share of the current account market increasing from 5.2 per cent to six per cent.

Nationwide insisted its results were evidence that mutuals can be successful in retail banking, amid fears that the woes at the Co-operative Banking Group had tarnished the sector’s reputation.

“We are making tangible progress in growing our market shares and continue to demonstrate that we offer a real, consistent and viable alternative to the UK banks. In short, we are a really serious competitor,” Nationwide said.

Its half-year profit boost is also putting the group ahead of plans agreed with the regulator to plug a hole in its balance sheet, according to Mr Beale.

The Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) demanded earlier this year that Nationwide must hold more capital as a buffer against financial crises, including bolstering its leverage ratio, which measures its capital as a percentage of its assets, to three per cent by the end of 2015.