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Barclays UK delivers £9.9bn in mortgage growth in 2021

Paloma Kubiak
Written By:
Paloma Kubiak
Posted:
Updated:
23/02/2022

Barclays UK grew its mortgage balance by around £9.9bn in 2021, growing its total back mortgage book to £158.1bn in December 2021.

This is up from £148.3m in December 2020 and £143bn in the same period in 2019. It said this was due to a “strong flow of new applications” and “strong customer retention”.

The report said there had been a near 8% growth in residential loans, while buy to let had “remained broadly stable”.

It added that owner-occupier interest-only home loans made up 19% of total balances, down from 22% in 2020. BTL loans made up 13% of the total balance, slightly lower than 14% in 2020.

The average owner-occupier loan to value (LTV) stayed roughly stable at around 50%, while for BTL loans it decreased slightly from 55% to 53%.

Barclays UK said it had served around 150,000 customers with a mortgage, of which 48,000 were first-time buyers. This is up from 25,000 in 2020.

The average LTV of its mortgage portfolio was 51% – the same level it has been since 2019. However, the average LTV of new mortgage lending was 70%, which is slightly up on 68% in both 2019 and 2020.

The lender reported a profit before tax of £2.47bn in 2021, which is up from £546m in 2020. This is also an increase from around £1.02bn in 2019.

The provider reported a total income for 2021 of £6.5bn, which is an increase of around 3% from the prior year. It attributed this to “robust mortgage lending” as well as balance growth in deposits and non-recurrence of Covid-19 customer support actions.

The number of branches has fallen to 666 from 859 in 2020 and 963 in 2019. The number of full-time employees has also fallen from 21,300 in 2020 to 7,100 in 2021.

The report added that Tushar Morzaria will step down as finance director, with Anna Cross due to take over as an internal successor.

Green mortgages

Barclays said it had completed around £1bn in green mortgages since it entered the space in 2018, with £520m of those completions occurring in 2021.

It added that in January this year, it had expanded the eligibility to include customers purchasing a new-build energy efficient buy-to-let property.

Overall, it said there were 4,434 green mortgage completions, and 2,330 of these were conducted in 2021.

The lender added that as of the end of Q3 2020 a valid energy performance certificate was available on 62% of its mortgage book by value and 38% had an EPC of C or higher.

Former boss pay freeze

Barclays also confirmed it would freeze former CEO Jes Staley’s bonus after he stepped down from his role in 2021 amid a regulatory investigation into his relationship with the late Jeffrey Epstein.

A separate statement from Barclays board said: “In line with its normal procedures, the Committee exercised its discretion to suspend the vesting of all of Mr Staley’s unvested awards, pending further developments in respect of the regulatory and legal proceedings related to the ongoing FCA and PRA investigation regarding Mr Staley. No further remuneration decisions have been made in respect of Mr Staley.”