Metro Bank agrees £12m deal for Ratesetter in lending push August 3, 2020 Metro Bank will snap up peer-to-peer lender Ratesetter after agreeing a £12m sale it hopes will push it into more profitable banking avenues. The challenger bank will pay an initial £2.5m, it said today, and another £9.5m over the three years following the completion of the deal, based on performance criteria. Daniel Frumkin, Metro Bank’s [...]
UK mortgage approvals beat expectations as housing market reopens July 29, 2020 UK mortgage approvals beat expectations and rocketed in June as the housing market reopened from the coronavirus lockdown, the latest figures have shown. The number of mortgages approved by UK banks rose to 40,000 in June after May’s record crash to just 9,300, the Bank of England said today. Analysts had predicted a rise to [...]
M&G Investments has eyes on UK Mortgages July 20, 2020 M&G Investment Management is pursuing a bid for UK Mortgages on behalf of one of its managed funds, M&G Specialty Finance Fund. M&G said it had made several approaches to the listed UK Mortgages on behalf of the fund. It said all of the proposals, including the latest one at 67p per share valuing the [...]
UK house prices fall for first time since 2012 amid coronavirus July 1, 2020 UK house prices posted an annual fall for the first time since 2012 in June amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to Nationwide’s index today. Growth turned negative last month with prices slipping 0.1 per cent year on year, following a 1.8 per cent climb in May, Nationwide said. Its data showed UK house prices also [...]
US pending home sales post record jump in May June 29, 2020 Contracts to buy previously-owned homes in the US rose dramatically in May, posting the biggest rebound on record as the American housing market began to recover from the Covid-19 hit. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) said that its Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed last month, surged 44.3 per cent in May [...]
UK mortgage approvals plunge to record low as coronavirus hammers economy June 29, 2020 UK mortgage approvals fell further to hit a record low in May as the coronavirus pandemic continued to hit the housing market, according to the latest Bank of England figures. Some 9,300 new loans for houses were approved last month, down from April’s 15,900. Economists polled by Bloomberg had been expecting 25,000 approvals for May. [...]
US mortgage applications hit 11-year high, homebuilding misses expectations June 17, 2020 Mortgage applications by Americans have hit their highest level since 2009 as people rush to take advantage of record low mortgage rates, but homebuilding in the US increased less than expected in May. Applications for a home loan in the US have surged over the past nine weeks after cratering in early April, according to [...]
FCA fines Lloyds Banking Group £64m after mistreating mortgage customers in difficulty June 11, 2020 Lloyds Banking Group must pay a £64m fine for failing to treat over a quarter of a million mortgage customers in arrears fairly. Lloyds Bank, the Bank of Scotland and the latter’s subsidiary The Mortgage Business all failed to take struggling customers’ financial circumstances into account when arranging repayments. The banks’ systems and procedures meant [...]
UK mortgage approvals plunge to record low during lockdown June 2, 2020 UK household borrowing dried up at a record rate in April and mortgage approvals plunged to their lowest since 1993 as consumers drew in their horns while the economy was ravaged by coronavirus. Instead of borrowing, households repaid their debts at a record pace. They returned £7.4bn to banks in the largest net repayment since [...]
Credit card lending fell for the first time in March May 1, 2020 UK consumers’ credit card debt fell for the first time since records began in March, as lockdown measures froze spending. The annual growth rate of credit card lending fell to minus 0.3 per cent, the first negative annual growth since the Bank of England (BoE) started tracking the data. The annual growth rate of other [...]