Nationwide Building Society says it is truly ‘open for business’ with mortgage lending up by more than 40 per cent in a year as it works towards its pledge of housing an additional 750,000 people by 2017.
Gross lending at Nationwide increased from £12.1 billion in 2011 to just over £17 billion in 2012.
Britain’s biggest mutual will use the government’s Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) to support a strategy of getting more people into a home of their own. The FLS is an initiative designed to provide banks with low cost funding to enable them to increase lending.
The world’s largest building society, which has around 15 million members and is a top-three provider of mortgages in the UK, is calling for a push within the sector to reverse a reluctance to lend – despite government funding designed to reinvigorate the market.
Nationwide says that few mortgage lenders have increased lending levels since the FLS was rolled out last August, but the society bucked the trend through growing lending by £3.6 billion against borrowing of £2 billion.
‘Your Home’
The Nationwide’s ‘Your Home’ goal of helping 750,000 people move into a home of their own by 2017 forms part of the society’s wider citizenship role in delivering a greater social impact. This figure refers to the number of people, not households.
Nationwide is focused on housing those who most need it, including first-time buyers, people in affordable and social housing, landlords and tenants in the rental market, and the homeless and those at risk of losing their home.
Chris Rhodes, executive director for retail at Nationwide, said: “Nationwide is very much open for business. We remain entirely focussed and committed on delivering the best possible service for our members.
“What we would like to see is a reinvigorated market, in which mortgage lenders who might be reluctant to lend – despite government assistance – start lending rather than shrinking. The fact that the FLS is being run until January 2014 should hopefully act as a catalyst for others to take that important step forward.”
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