Skipton chief: It’s ‘dangerous’ to wait for the government to help build more houses

Stuart Haire has a surprising admission to make about the 170-year old building society he now runs.

“When I first joined I hadn’t heard of it,” the chief of Skipton tells City A.M. in an interview.

The affable Glaswegian had an illustrious career bouncing around the upper echelons of Britain’s lending giants before leaving his job running HSBC’s wealth and personal banking business in 2022. Now, however, his challenge is getting the country to take note of one of its smaller players.

In a year at the helm he has set about trying to turn Skipton into a national force by positioning it as the bank of the first time buyer, helping those shut out of the property market get into homes.

Facing the heft of established high street players, sprawling competition from other mutuals and a tumultuous mortgage market, he’s got some ground to make up from the sleepy market town of Skipton. But, he insists, the mission is clear.

“I want to help more people get a home.”

Mortgage growth

After a year of Haire at the top, Skipton appears to be pushing in the right direction.

In its full-year results yesterday, the firm hailed a “transformative” 12 months with a ten per cent boost in profit to £333.4m and headway made in both the national savings and mortgage market.

Total mortgage balance growth rose 12 per cent to £28.6bn as Skipton increased its relative mortgage market share by 12.7 per cent. 

That came amid a year in which rapidly climbing rates dragged on the property market. While scores of high street names raked in cash on the back of those hikes, Haire says the lion’s share of Skipton’s growth came from expanding its lending rather than a rate windfall.

“We did get some benefit, but most of the benefit came from growing the balance sheet. That bigger balance sheet delivered most of the income,” he adds.

Skipton’s overall members, which ultimately own the group, swelled 8.1 per cent to over 1.2m.

Housing exposure

Skipton is somewhat unique in its breadth of its exposure to the housing market. Beyond the core business it owns the country’s biggest estate agent, Connells, which feeds both data and customers onto its lending book, as well as an invoice finance outfit, and a New Zealand-based AI firm called Jade, where it tests and develops digital products.

Connells in particular had a tougher year as house sales touched the lowest level since 2009. Profits in the division cratered to £13.8m from £67.5m a year prior as revenues tumbled 7.7 per cent to £950.9m.

The troubles facing the housing market have now offered Haire a worthy and commercially beneficial platform to campaign on. He’s set the UK’s housing crisis in his sights as a cause that benefits both his customers and the bottom line.

“There is a shortage of [housing] supply. And that shortage is not being made up by new builds,” he says.

“I think the most important thing anyone can do in government is to support house building, quite frankly. If all you’re doing is maintaining the same supply of houses, but artificially inflating the demand, then you’re just going to be pushing up prices and making it further out of reach.

“The most important thing that the government can do is get really serious about central and local planning, to actually get the spades in the ground and build houses.”

Stuart Haire

“The most important thing that the government can do is get really serious about central and local planning, to actually get the spades in the ground and build houses.”

Is he lobbying the government directly to push through changes?

“I always think it’s dangerous to wait on the government, as really you’re waiting on them to use taxpayers money,” he adds.

For its part, Skipton has rolled out a number of products to try and boost access to housing, most notably the first zero deposit product to hit the market since 2009, which offer buyers a first step onto the ladder without the help of the “bank of mum and dad”.

Even while structural issues remain, Skipton is among scores of firms to report something like a rebound in the market in the opening months of the year. “Headwinds have become tailwinds”, he says, and buyers have started “snapping them up for the asking price” once again.

“Interest rates going up knocks consumers’ confidence, so as they start to level off and come down, consumers get more confident about selling and buying. We’ve seen property availability going up nearly 25 per cent.”

Branch growth?

After a bumper period of profits and the likelihood of a housing rebound this year, Skipton is eyeing growth in slightly unusual directions. More established peers are slashing their physical footprints and closing down branches, but Haire’s open to a different direction.

“I’d love to grow the branch network but I’d only do that if it’s what our members need,” he says. 

“One reason is we’re not about doing transactions or drawing out cash. We’re about giving financial advice. And that’s face to face,” he adds.

Just as rival Nationwide did in a recent advertising campaign that irked its banking peers, Skipton is looking to position itself as the lender to the everyman, with services spanning estate agency, financial advice and banking.

“There’s quite a breadth to it – and not a lot of people know that,” he says.

Now Skipton’s challenge is just getting the country to take note.