Paragon reports 20% year-on-year growth of new lending

The group lent a total of £1.9bn of new lending across all business lines in the nine months to 30 June 2019, a 20% increase on the previous year.

Paragon reports 20% year-on-year growth of new lending

Paragon Banking Group saw new lending increase by 20% year-on-year in the nine months to June.

The group lent a total of £1.9bn of new lending across all business lines in the nine months to 30 June 2019, a 20% increase on the previous year. Within this total, Paragon’s mortgage lending grew from £1.13bn to £1.19bn.

John Heron (pictured), managing director of mortgages at Paragon, said: “Paragon is performing well. We have delivered strong new lending across all our business lines and the buy-to-let pipeline has grown despite the uncertain economic backdrop.

“We’re confident of meeting our objectives for the year as we continue to focus on the needs of larger, more complex and specialist landlords.”

Paragon’s specialist focus on professional landlords enabled it to increase its share of the market, with 89% of completions being from complex landlords, compared to 76% in 2018.

It was a particularly strong quarter for buy-to-let, with the new business pipeline reaching £733m, up from £711m in the previous quarter. Annual buy-to-let redemptions continue to be encouraging at 8.6%, down 2.1% from the previous year.

Asset finance and other specialist lending grew by 58% to £0.71bn, compared to the same quarter last year.