Royal Bank of Scotland has announced a pre-tax profit of £1.b billion for the first quarter of the year, up from £826 million posted for the same period last year.
Gross new mortgage lending in Q1 2014 was £4.4 billion in UK Retail, a market share of 9.5%, including more than 4,700 approvals assisting young people and families to buy their first home through the Government’s Help to Buy scheme.
Net new lending of £1.2 billion took the UK Retail mortgage portfolio to more than £100 billion for the first time.
Loans and advances to customers increased due to a £1.2 billion rise in mortgage balances, partly offset by a seasonal decline in credit card balances and personal lending and the write-off of some older defaulted unsecured debt.
Ross McEwan, chief eExecutive at RBS, said: “Just over two months ago, I set out our plan for making RBS the most trusted bank in the UK. Today’s results show that in steady state, RBS will be a bank that does a great job for customers while delivering good returns for our shareholders. But we still have a lot of work to do and plenty of issues from the past to reckon with.
“Everyone at RBS is focused squarely on doing everything we can to earn the trust of our customers and in the process change the banking sector for the benefit of the UK.”