Skipton Building Society reports profit as David Cutter praises strong perfromance

The mutual also announced that it had agreed a merger deal with Holmesdale Building Society.

Skipton Building Society saw mortgage balances grow by £1.3bn to £16.8bn. Its gross mortgage lending increased by 12.8 per cent to £4.5bn.

David Cutter, chief executive of Skipton Building Society, said: “Today’s results show that 2017 was another year of strong performance for Skipton Building Society, and further demonstrated that our 164-year-old core purpose of helping more people into homes and helping people save for their life ahead is still as relevant today as it was when we were founded.

“In 2017 we enabled more people to save for their future and finance their own home than we ever have before.

“We were the first, and to date only, financial services provider to launch a cash Lifetime ISA, enabling 50,5903 people to invest in their future by saving for their first home or for their life ahead.

“The level of service experienced by our members is important to us. One of the achievements that we are most proud of over the past 12 months was leaping into the prestigious ‘top ten’ for customer experience excellence across 295 major UK brands and being named the UK’s top building society for customer experience4.

“This excellent customer service is reflected by our growing membership numbers, which have increased by 58,657 in 2017.”

The society said it helped 25,979 homeowners purchase or remortgage their properties, including 4,540 first time buyers and 1,498 through participation in the Government’s Help to Buy equity loan scheme.