Mortgage applications boomed at Coventry Building Society’s new subsidiary, The Co-op Bank, in its first batch of financial results since the acquisition.
The bank recorded £116.2m in pre-tax profit for 2024, down from the £120.9m booked in 2023 but in line with company expectations.
It said lower mortgage margins and increased savings rates weighed on net interest income, dampening profits.
However, the firm received a major boost from mortgage applications, which surged 50 per cent to £3.44bn, compared to £2.26bn in 2023.
The lender said simplifying its IT infrastructure had enabled the bank to respond faster and offer larger loans, with the average loan size rising to £207k from £159k.
The Co-Op Bank’s interim chief executive Steve Hughes said: “The bank has made significant progress in simplifying its IT infrastructure, delivering the commitment to exit legacy platforms and data centres and bring £19bn of mortgage balances and £5bn of savings balances onto a single system.”
Alongside its IT transformation, the bank launched numerous switching campaigns in 2024 to attract and retain customers, which the lender said led to positive net current account switching for the first time in over ten years.
The lender was able to reduce costs by one per cent to £390.7m despite rising inflation and “an increase in customer fraud remediation costs.”
Coventry Building Society completed its £780m acquisition of the bank on January 2, 2025, putting the lender back into mutual ownership.
Commenting on the results, Hughes said: “I am delighted to welcome The Co-Operative Bank to Coventry Building Society, bringing the original ethical bank once again into the ownership of a mutual organisation.
“In these first weeks as interim Chief Executive Officer, I have been hugely impressed by the dedication of my new colleagues in serving our customers at a time of significant change.”