Revealed: Hampshire Trust Bank more than doubles new lending in 2016, after it launches commercial mortgages business
Hampshire Trust Bank more than doubled the value of the new loans it wrote in 2016, Morning Wire can reveal.
The challenger bank racked up loan originations of £393m in its 2016 financial year, up 132 per cent compared with £169m at the end of 2015.
The boost is partly thanks to the lender launching a commercial mortgages business, while its asset finance and property finance divisions also continued to grow.
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The recent success of the bank, which was initially formed in 1977 but acquired by a new management team in 2014, lead to it moving its headquarters to a custom-designed space in 55 Bishopsgate last month.
However, the challenger is also working against a backdrop of lower for longer interest rates as well as increased red tape for the housing market, including measures designed to cap buy to let investment.
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Ahead of the spring Budget earlier this month, Mark Sismey-Durrant, Hampshire Trust Bank's chief executive, called for a review of stamp duty as well as more help to be extended to first-time buyers.
"We believe that a reduction in stamp duty could encourage more people to upscale and therefore help enable first time buyers to get on to the property ladder," he said. "An increase in transactions will generate more revenue, it will also give people a helping hand towards homeownership, a key objective for the government."