Ratings agency Moody's hands upgrade boost to Skipton Building Society

Skipton, the UK’s fourth largest building society, has had its to ratings upgraded from Baa1 from Baa2.

The outlook on these ratings has also been changed from positive to stable.

Moody’s has also affirmed Skipton’s Prime 2 short term local and foreign currency deposit ratings.

In their assessment, Moody’s notes improvements in Skipton Building Society’s asset quality of the mortgage and savings division.

The global credit ratings agency references Skipton’s strong capitalisation and conservative funding position.

It also highlights the society is “maintaining adequate profitability despite industry pressures on the net interest margin”.

Skipton’s Group Chief Executive, David Cutter, said: “This ratings upgrade is very pleasing as we continue to build on the strong performance seen in recent years. While continuing to satisfy our ratings agencies, in the last twelve months we’ve grown our customer base, further strengthened our capital position and delivered excellent customer service. Today’s news is testament to a great deal of hard work paying off for the benefit of our members.”

Moody’s is an independent body that assign ratings of credit worthiness to institutions such as banks and building societies.

At its last set of results Skipton anounced it had grown its mortgage book by £1.5bn to £14.2bn. Profit before tax (PBT) amounted to £146.9m, compared with £180.6m the year before.