Buy To Let
Revealed: The UK’s biggest mortgage lenders of 2013
Find out which banks and building societies lent the most to home buyers last year.
Lloyds Banking Group remained the biggest mortgage lender in the UK completing gross mortgage lending of £36.9bn in 2013. This is a rise of more than £10bn on the previous 12 month period.
Nationwide held its position as the biggest building society and second biggest lender overall. Unlike the other lenders listed here, its financial year runs to 4 April and during the last year it completed £28.1bn in mortgages.
Santander leapt from sixth to third in the list of biggest lenders having completed £18.4bn during 2013, a rise of £3.8bn on the year before.
Royal Bank of Scotland was marginally up on its 2012 figures, growing its new mortgage lending by £300m to reach £14.3bn.
However, both HSBC and Barclays saw their level of gross mortgage lending fall compared to the previous year. HSBC’s lending was down £2bn on 2012 figures while Barclays dropped by £1.1bn.
| 2013 | 2012 | change | |
| Lloyds Banking Group | £36.9bn | £26.2bn | up £10.7bn |
| Nationwide | £28.1bn | £21.5bn | up £6.6bn |
| Santander | £18.4bn | £14.6bn | up £3.8bn |
| Barclays | £17.1bn | £18.2bn | down £1.1bn |
| HSBC | £14.4bn | £16.4bn | down £2bn |
| Royal Bank of Scotland | £14.3bn | £14bn | up £0.3bn |
Along with the rise in lending at Nationwide, fellow mutuals also saw mortgage books grow in the last 12 months. Yorkshire Building Society completed £6.8bn of mortgage lending during the year, a 48% rise on the previous 12 month period.
This result edged it ahead of Coventry Building Society in the battle to become the UK’s second biggest mutual for new lending. Coventry completed £5.9bn across the year, up from £5.1bn in 2012.
Skipton and Leeds rounded off the top five building societies, advancing loans worth £2.4bn and £2.2bn respectively.
The big story of the year was the launch of the government’s Help to Buy scheme. First revealed by Chancellor George Osborne during his Budget speech in March 2013, the scheme is credited with increasing consumer confidence in the mortgage and housing markets.
The first half of the two-part scheme, the Help to Buy equity loan, launched across England in April 2013. This was followed by the launch of a similar scheme in Scotland in September.
The second phase, the Help to Buy mortgage guarantee, launched across the UK in October 2013. Initially offered by just Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax, part of Lloyds Banking Group, most of the country’s biggest banks have now joined the scheme.
