Coventry, the UK's third largest building society, has today 2 March 2010 announced its financial results for the year ended 31 December 2009.
Highlights include:
Strong financials
- Record operating profit before impairments and exceptional items of £75.0 million
(2008 - £71.7 million).
- Profit before tax of £56.2 million (2008 - £26.4 million).
- Profit after tax of £43.5 million (2008 - £18.8 million).
Record market share
- Gross mortgage lending of over £2.7 billion, representing 15% of all new lending by building societies (source – BSA).
- Net mortgage lending of £919 million, equivalent to 8% of all net lending undertaken across the market as a whole (source - CML).
- Continued lending made possible by strong funding position.
- Retail savings balances grew by £833 million in 2009 and have increased by £5 billion (61%) in last three years.
- Completed oversubscribed £350 million 10 year unsecured loan note issuance to wholesale investors in October 2009.
- Over 270,000 new accounts opened during the year.
Strong, stable and efficient
- Cost to mean assets ratio of only 0.38%, the lowest level reported by a UK building society.
- Mortgage balances 2.5% or more in arrears around one third of industry average (source – FSA).
- Loan loss provisions amongst the lowest of any large UK lender.
- All growth is organic and lending is concentrated in low risk, residential sectors. The Society has never purchased a mortgage book or undertaken second charge or commercial lending.
- Core tier 1 ratio of 27.9%, the highest reported by any large building society.
- Retained strong credit ratings throughout 'credit crunch' - Fitch (A) and Moody's (A3).
- 100% of mortgages funded by retail savings, capital and reserves.
Focus on mutual values
- Over 95% of variable rate retail savings balances have seen an increase in interest rate relative to the Bank of England base rate since 2008, delivering annualised interest benefits to members of £70 million.
- Coventry had too few complaints to feature in either of the Financial Ombudsman Service referral tables published in September 2009 and February 2010.
- £3.4 million donated to the Poppy Appeal since October 2008 as part of extended programme of community and charitable activities.
The maintenance and integrity of the Coventry Building Society web site is the responsibility of the directors; the work carried out by the auditors does not involve consideration of these matters and, accordingly, the auditors accept no responsibility for any changes that may have occurred to the financial statements since they were initially presented on the web site.
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