High street lender Barclays’ gross mortgage lending stands at £23.9bn in 2024, a rise from £22.7bn in 2023.
According to Barclays’ latest annual financial report, the rise in gross mortgage lending was “mainly driven by interest rate reductions leading to lower mortgage pricing and a corresponding increase in mortgage affordability and demand, along with a strategy to increase mortgage market share”.
This includes a rise in the proportion of high-loan-to-value (LTV) mortgages, with new home loans above 90% LTV standing at 0.9%, up from 0.6% in 2023.
Barclays’ UK mortgage balances were £163.1bn, which is slightly down from £163.5bn in 2023.
The lender’s 90-day arrears rates stand at 0.2%, which is in line with the previous year.
Barclays said it had over 100,000 homebuyers and owners with mortgage applications in 2024.
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The firm reported £3.6bn profit before tax, which is a rise from £2.9bn in the prior year.
The bank also reported an income of £8.3bn, a jump from £7.6bn in 2023.
The lender said credit impairment charges came to £352m, a rise from £308m. The increase was driven by the acquisition of Tesco Bank, but was partially offset by “resilience credit performance” in UK cards and UK mortgages.
Barclays said its focus areas going forward were “delivering operational efficiencies to facilitate investment in growth”, “improving customer experience and product offering”, and “growing lending market share”.
The firm said the latter would be in unsecured and secured lending as well as business banking, and that the Tesco Bank acquisition would “maximise the opportunity”.
Barclays said its green home mortgage, which was launched in 2018 and expanded to cover the buy-to-let (BTL) market in 2022, had lent around £1.1bn to customers in 2024, out of £4.7bn lent over the period.
