Our 2022 financial results
We’ve published our financial results for 2022 and we’re delighted to say it’s been another record-breaking year for the Society. We’ve helped thousands of first-time buyers onto the property ladder and supported our members during difficult economic times.
Our performance was led by our purpose of putting home ownership within reach of more people and supporting this by providing our savings members with above average market rates[1].
Read on to find out more.
You can read our 2022 annual results press release here
Mortgages
In 2022, we delivered record residential lending figures to bring home ownership into reach of more people than ever before. Our mortgage assets now stand at a record high of £20.3bn. We’re honoured so many homeowners have chosen us as their mortgage provider.
And we continued our ambition to be the lender of choice for first-time buyers. In 2022 one in three of our new mortgage members were first time buyers, in fact we welcomed 18,000 of them to the Society.
We’re also extending our suspension of all mortgage arrears fees until at least the beginning of 2024, once again putting our purpose and values into action.
Savings
Our savings members are vital to our purpose, so we continued to focus on offering a competitive range of savings products with higher than market average savings rates.
Our average savings interest rates were 0.5% above the market average, meaning that our members benefitted to the tune of £80.5m. We continue to do what we can to support our members, who enable us to move forward with our purpose.
Savings balances have now reached a record high of £17bn (2021: £15.25bn), giving us additional strength to carry our purpose forward into 2023.
Standing by our members
Due to political and economic upheaval during 2022, mortgage rates rose rapidly. This saw many lenders temporarily pulling out of the market. We adapted to these testing times, keeping products aimed at first-time buyers available throughout.
As a mutual, we’re committed to be there for our members during tough times. The Bank of England increased the Bank Base Rate on nine occasions since December 2021, by a total of 3.40%. However, we only passed an increase of 1.70% onto our standard variable mortgage rate members.
We’re also doing what we can to address the UK’s homeownership crisis and we published our own guide to ‘Tackling the UK’s Homeownership Crisis’. This features policies we believe could guide the Government and housing industry to support first-time buyers.
Our finances strengthened once again with a record year profit before tax of £220.5m (2021: £163.7m), and our financial position remains strong, with a high level of reserves to draw on in the future if we need to.
Looking back at 2022
On our way to delivering a strong financial performance, we also had plenty of other highlights in 2022.
Colleagues and members continued their enthusiastic support for our national charity partner, Dementia UK. We’re currently working with Dementia UK on the ‘Closer to Home’ project, which brings support from DUK’s admiral nurses closer to families who need it, with face-to-face appointments available in our branches. We also tripled our funding to the Leeds Building Society Foundation, increasing our annual grant to £300,000. In total, we donated almost £1m to good causes in 2022.
We were once again accredited with the Fair Tax Mark from the Fair Tax Foundation. This recognises that we do the right thing when it comes to tax transparency and paying our fair share of tax. We were the first national high street financial institution to receive this in 2018 and have been re-accredited every year since.
And we continue to make working with our broker partners more streamlined and efficient, with further improvements to broker systems made in 2022.
[1] The Society paid an average of 1.15% to our savers compared to the rest of market average of 0.65%, which equates to an annual benefit to our savers of £80.5m. Source: CACI’s CSDB, Stock, January 2022 to December 2022, latest data available. CACI is an independent company that provides financial benchmarking data of the retail cash savings market.