Newly-listed UK bank Shawbrook Group has said its first-half profit nearly doubled, driven by an increase in its loan book.
The bank, which was founded in 2011 and went public this year, said it remained well-placed to respond to the changing regulatory environment.
That comes just a few weeks after Chancellor George Osborne announced an eight per cent surcharge on banks' profits effective January 2016.
Shawbrook's underlying pretax profit rose to £34.8 million for the first half ended June 30, from £17.9m a year earlier.
The bank's loan book grew 38 per cent to £2.72bn, from £1.97bn.
Shawbrook said net interest margin remained stable at 6.1 per cent in the first half of 2015, helped by continued reduction in the cost of funds.
The bank is aiming to maintain net interest margin at about six per cent in the medium term, according to the target set during the initial public offering.
The bank said its balance sheet was positioned to benefit from rising interest rates. However, the timing of the anticipated benefit was uncertain.
Shawbrook is one of several challenger banks to emerge since the financial crisis.
Former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive and chairman Sir George Mathewson recently stepped down from his chairman role at Shawbrook having been with the business since it was founded in 2011. Sir George had stated he would not stay in the role once the flotation of the bank was completed.
He was replaced by Iain Cornish, previously of Yorkshire Building Society, earlier this month.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here