TIDMNOTP

RNS Number : 5715F

Nottingham Building Society

22 February 2018

Nottingham Building Society

Results for the year ended 31 December 2017

Nottingham Building Society has today announced its results for the year ended 31 December 2017 reporting further good progress in the development of its 'all under one roof' advice and service proposition.

Below are some of the key achievements and financial highlights of 2017:

-- Record gross mortgage lending of over GBP1 billion for the first time, resulting in overall mortgage book growth of 11.6%;

-- Strong retail franchise growth - total branch savings balances of GBP2.1bn, up 8% in the year, which have more than doubled in the last five years;

-- The Society has opened seven new branch locations in 2017 and welcomed over 25,500 new customers;

   --              Achieved a Customer Net Promoter Score of 79%; 
   --              Total assets of GBP3.9 billion; 
   --              Net interest margin at 1.29%; 
   --              Group pre-tax profit of GBP14.5m, a small improvement on the prior year; 

-- Arrears levels remain very low, below a quarter of the industry average (2017: 0.15% v industry at average of 0.82%); representing 40 accounts out of a total mortgage base of almost 26,000 accounts; and

   --              Strong capital ratios with Common Equity Tier 1 at 14.6% and leverage of 4.9%. 

Commenting David Marlow, Chief Executive said:

"Despite continuing uncertainty facing the UK economy, I am pleased to report a year of strong progress in the development of our 'all under one roof' strategy which is focused on supporting and rewarding our members for doing the right thing to plan for and protect their financial futures.

At the beginning of 2017 we set a number of objectives seeking to continue to grow the membership of the Society, look at ways in which we could reward membership through the delivery of our unique advice and service proposition, continue to invest in the infrastructure and capability of the Society, maintain our world class level of service and continue to support our communities under our Doing Good Together initiative. I am pleased to report that we have made excellent progress against all of these key objectives during the year.

In mortgage lending it has been a record year. We have processed mortgage applications of GBP1.4 billion, an increase of 29% over the previous record achieved in 2016, and delivered gross lending of over GBP1.0bn for the first time, a 28% increase on performance in 2016. The number of customers choosing to remain with the Society at the end of their mortgage deal is still at high levels with almost two out of every three choosing to do so, representing GBP601m an 8% increase on 2016. Overall this enabled us to increase our mortgage assets by 11.6% - a strong performance.

One area that has clearly set us apart is the role of the branch network in delivering our strategy. We are committed to branches as they are the ideal place to most effectively deliver our 'all under one roof' advice and service proposition. The continuing popularity of our branches is supported by the fact that our branch savings balances continued to grow, increasing by a further 8% in 2017. I am also pleased that we have been able to add a further seven new locations to our branch network at the end of 2017, which takes our branch network to 67 branches spanning 11 counties. We are now trading on the high street in Norfolk for the first time in the Society's history.

Whilst branches are vital to our strategy, increasing and improving our digital offering to existing and prospective new members will also be important in the years ahead. As technology improves, we believe that we can develop our unique proposition to work seamlessly between the world of face-to-face and digital service. 2017 saw us commit to a multi-million pound investment to develop our digital capability to complement our growing physical presence. Customers and members will see the first step in this journey in 2018 as we replace our current web portals for intermediary mortgage business and online savings with significantly improved offerings.

Serving and rewarding membership

In a crowded marketplace, not only is it vital to have a differentiated proposition but as a mutual to clearly demonstrate the benefits and value of membership. We were delighted therefore to have launched our member rewards scheme in 2017. As we laid out last year we want to be able to highlight the benefits of membership through our unique advice and service proposition. 'Member Rewards' achieves this by offering a range of discounts on our services to members who have saved more than GBP500 with us and have been a member for longer than 12 months (mortgage customers saving more than GBP500 qualify immediately).

These exclusive offers are designed to reward our loyal members for doing the right thing to plan for and protect their financial futures including GBP500 off estate agency fees, GBP25 cashback on home insurance, GBP120 cashback on funeral plans, free whole-of-market mortgage advice (GBP249 otherwise) and access to exclusive savings offers during the year. These represent genuine savings on a number of important services designed to reward members for planning ahead as well as for their loyalty to the Society.

Whilst the scheme was only launched in May, we have returned over GBP250,000 of rewards to members in the first few months of operating the scheme, an encouraging start. Members are clearly attracted to the concept as the numbers of eligible members has increased by approximately 10%. We expect 'Member Rewards' to be a consistent and enduring feature of membership of the Society in the future, constantly reflecting its benefit and value.

Another key initiative undertaken in 2017 is how we organise ourselves to deliver our unique proposition in branch to enable more customers access to our entire range of services in a consistent manner. Whilst this will take some time to complete we have made significant progress in the last year which has included reorganising every job in our branch network, affecting 300+ team members, with roles that are now more appropriately aligned to delivering our broad range of services consistently. We have reviewed opening hours, which means some branches will now open earlier and close later in line with customer demand, and in 2018 we will begin adding estate agency and building society services to some branches that currently do not offer these services.

Another commitment we made this year was to maintain our world class level of service. Despite the extensive and rapid rate of change across the Society's operations, we are pleased to have achieved this with a Net Promoter Score of 79% for the year, which places us amongst the best organisations in the world.

Financial performance

Whilst it is important to grow the Society and its balance sheet, this must be achieved whilst balancing the conflicting needs of both our mortgage and savings members. We have therefore ensured that the mortgage yield we accrue is sufficient to pay our savings members a competitive return, cover the costs of running the organisation, make sufficient profit to enable us to cover our regulatory capital requirements and continue to invest in the Society for the future. This has been challenging at times when assessed against the high number of sub 1% mortgage rates that were available on the market throughout the year and our average savings rate of 1.0% over the period. We chose to avoid this aggressive level of mortgage pricing and managed to achieve record lending whilst not compromising on our credit quality. We believe the fact that we achieved this, whilst increasing our branch savings balances and delivering an average interest margin of 1.29%, only 3bps lower than in 2016 strongly demonstrates our mutual credentials of striking the right balance for members. Overall this enabled us to report a profit before tax of GBP14.5m a small improvement on 2016, equating to a profit after tax ratio of 0.31% per GBP100 of assets - in line with our plan.

A crucial element in our financial performance is to execute our spending plans carefully, ensuring that costs are at an appropriate level whilst having the capability to deliver our proposition and invest effectively for the future. It is also important that with a higher than average cost model we see continued cost efficiencies being achieved. Again, in 2017 we have made good progress with our management expense ratio dropping by 2 basis points to 1.10% for the year. Good evidence that we are targeting our expenditure effectively.

Quality & strength

The Society continues to maintain its very high level of financial strength, whether viewed from a capital, liquidity or credit risk perspective. Our capital levels remains significantly ahead of our regulatory requirements and our leverage ratio at 4.9% demonstrates the strength of our balance sheet for what is a relatively low risk model. Our liquidity position also remains strong and well controlled; backed up by rising branch retail savings balances and an increasing number of options available to our Treasury team, including Bank of England market facilities and secured bilateral wholesale lending.

We continue to maintain the highest standards of credit assessment and quality. Despite increasing the mortgage book to almost 26,000 accounts we only have 40 accounts three months or more in arrears and have taken a total of eight properties into possession during the entire year.

Supporting the communities

Our Doing Good Together initiative continued to go from strength to strength in 2017. Staff have continued to generously give their time volunteering to support a whole range of worthy causes from financial education workshops to gardening projects.

Our Grants for Good programme saw 14 charities receiving valuable financial support to fund work in the areas of financial education, tackling homelessness and improving employability - our key themes for community support.

We have also continued to work with our key partners throughout the year. With Young Enterprise, we supported 24 schools across the East Midlands in running their Company Programmes, providing invaluable experience in commerce and entrepreneurship to young people. We extended our programme with SportsAid, supporting 50 budding local athletes in their quest to achieve Olympic stardom.

We also passed a milestone with our charity partner Framework - with GBP50,000 of fundraising raised to tackle homelessness across the East Midlands since our partnership began. With some of the money raised we have provided 5,000 hours of tuition for the charity's Skills Plus programme to help build skills such as budgeting and tenancy management to help avoid homelessness in the future.

In recognition of our efforts to support our communities, the Society was delighted to be invited to an event at 10 Downing Street, organised to recognise contributions to civil society in the Midlands. This gave us an excellent opportunity to showcase our work to government officials and ministers.

Summary and outlook

After a year of strong progress and despite the continuing uncertainty in the economic and political environment, we can be confident that we can move forward on our firm foundations. In 2018 we will be focusing on four key pillars of growing and rewarding membership; people, culture and community; operational excellence and strong financial adequacy. This will involve continuing the work of recent years; developing our nascent member reward programme, bedding in our enlarged and reorganised branch network, rolling out our plans to fuse digital and physical to create a strong platform for our unique proposition and building on our progress in mortgage lending.

As always we will strive to deliver first class service across all of our customer facing operations, maintain our financial strength and continue to support our communities through our Doing Good Together initiative."

David Marlow

Chief Executive

22 February 2018

Consolidated income statement for the year ended 31 December 2017

                                                                                                                                                   2017                       2016 
                                                                                                                                                   GBPm                          GBPm 

Interest receivable and similar income 82.2 89.3

Interest payable and similar charges (33.9) (43.7)

Net interest income 48.3 45.6

Fees and commissions receivable 9.1 9.8

Fees and commissions payable (1.6) (1.2)

Other income - 0.3

Net losses from derivative financial instruments (0.2) (0.9)

Total net income 55.6 53.6

Administrative expenses (38.3) (35.4)

Depreciation and amortisation (3.0) (3.3)

Finance cost (0.3) (0.2)

Impairment release on loans and advances 1.3 -

Provisions for liabilities - FSCS levy and other (0.8) (0.4)

   (Loss)/profit on disposal of property, plant and equipment                                     - 

(0.1)

Profit before tax 14.5 14.2

Tax expense (3.0) (3.2)

Profit for the financial year 11.5 11.0

Consolidated statement of comprehensive income

for the year ended 31 December 2017

                                                                                                                                                   2017                       2016 
                                                                                                                                                   GBPm                          GBPm 

Profit for the financial year 11.5 11.0

Items that will not be re-classified to the income statement

Remeasurements of the defined benefit obligation 2.1 (4.5)

Tax on items that will not be re-classified (0.4) 0.7

Items that may subsequently be re-classified to the income statement

Available-for-sale reserve

Valuation (losses)/gains taken to reserves (0.4) 0.2

Tax on items that may subsequently be re-classified 0.1 (0.1)

   Other comprehensive income/(expense) for the period net of income tax             1.4 (3.7) 

Total comprehensive income for the year 12.9 7.3

Consolidated statement of financial position

as at 31 December 2017

                                                                                                                                                   2017                       2016 
                                                                                                                                                   GBPm                          GBPm 

Assets

Liquid assets 494.9 527.0

Derivative financial instruments 7.3 4.7

Loans and advances to customers 3,368.8 3,032.6

Fixed and other assets 29.4 27.1

Total assets 3,900.4 3,591.4

Liabilities

Shares 2,595.4 2,457.4

Borrowings 1,042.3 872.0

Derivative financial instruments 9.9 19.7

Other liabilities 14.5 16.3

Subscribed capital 25.6 26.2

Total liabilities 3,687.7 3,391.6

Reserves

General reserves 212.7 199.5

Available-for-sale reserves - 0.3

Total reserves and liabilities 3,900.4 3,591.4

Consolidated statement of changes in members' interests as at 31 December 2017 General reserve Available-for-sale reserve Total

                                                                                                                   GBPm                          GBPm                                          GBPm 

Balance as at 1 January 2017 199.5 0.3 199.8

Profit for the year 11.5 - 11.5

Other comprehensive income for the period (net of tax)

Net losses from changes in fair value - (0.3) (0.3)

Remeasurement of defined benefit obligation 1.7 - 1.7

Total comprehensive income/(expense) for the period 13.2 (0.3) 12.9

Balance as at 31 December 2017 212.7 - 212.7

Balance as at 1 January 2016 192.3 0.2 192.5

Profit for the year 11.0 - 11.0

Other comprehensive income for the period (net of tax)

Net gains from changes in fair value - 0.1 0.1

Remeasurement of defined benefit obligation (3.8) - (3.8)

Total comprehensive income for the period 7.2 0.1 7.3

Balance as at 31 December 2016 199.5 0.3 199.8

Consolidated cash flow statement

for the year ended 31 December 2017

                                                                                                                                                   2017                       2016 
                                                                                                                                                   GBPm                          GBPm 

Cash flows from operating activities

Profit before tax 14.5 14.2

Depreciation and amortisation 3.0 3.3

   Loss/(profit) on disposal of property, plant and equipment                                     - 

0.1

Interest on subscribed capital 2.0 2.0

   Net gains on disposal and amortisation of debt securities                                       0.7 

0.8

Decrease in impairment of loans and advances 1.3 -

                                                                                                                                                   21.5                        20.4 

Changes in operating assets and liabilities

(Increase)/decrease in other assets (3.9) (2.3)

(Decrease)/increase in other liabilities (10.5) 9.0

   Decrease/(increase) in loans and advances to credit institutions                          10.4 

(15.7)

Increase in debt securities in issue 54.8 89.7

(Increase) in loan and advances to customers (337.5) (236.1)

Increase in shares 138.0 24.2

Increase in borrowings 115.5 139.3

Taxation paid (2.6) (3.9)

                                                                                                                                                   (14.3)                     24.6 

Capital expenditure and financial investment (17.3) 1.9

Financing activities (1.9) (1.9)

(Decrease)/ increase in cash and cash equivalents (33.5) 24.6

Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of year 393.8 369.2

Cash and cash equivalents at end of year 360.3 393.8

Summary ratios

                                                                                                                                                   2017                       2016 
                                                                                                                                                   %                             % 

Common Equity Tier 1 ratio 14.6 14.7

Liquid assets as a percentage of shares and borrowings 13.60

15.83

   Group profit for the year as a percentage of mean total assets                                0.31 

0.32

   Group management expenses as a percentage of mean total assets                       1.10 1.12 
   Society management expenses as a percentage of mean total assets                     0.92 0.91 

Society interest margin as a percentage of mean assets 1.29

1.32

Notes

-- The financial information set out above, which was approved by the Board of Directors on 21 February 2018, does not constitute accounts within the meaning of the Building Societies Act 1986.

-- The financial information for the years ended 31 December 2017 and 31 December 2016 has been extracted from the Accounts for those years and on which the auditors have given an unqualified opinion.

This information is provided by RNS

The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

END

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