The Nationwide Building Society lent a record £33.7 billion in the year to 4 April 2017.

This included the highest gross prime lending – helping a record 75,000 first time buyers purchase a home of their own – up 31% against last year. This equates to £12 billion in mortgage lending for those moving into their first property.

The country’s largest building society has become the UK’s top choice for current accounts, opening more accounts than any other provider. The Society accounted for one in seven current accounts opened during the last year, opening a record 795,000. This included attracting 18% of switchers from other providers and, through the FlexPlus packaged account represented one in three customers for this type of product across the market.

Joe Garner, Nationwide’s chief executive, said: “Our members have benefitted by over half a billion pounds from our commitments such as paying higher rates of interest and charging lower fees than our major high street competitors. At the same time we delivered strong profitability, robust financial strength, and continued to invest in the business.

“We made a conscious decision to support those saving regularly and aspiring to get onto the housing ladder and our mutual model enabled us to do this without affecting what has been a high performing year. It is the combination of that value and our focus on customer service, where we are rated number one for customer satisfaction amongst our high-street peer group, which helped Nationwide grow membership to an all-time high.

“While we saw record use of online services driven by our mobile banking app, we know that members value our branch network, which is why we are investing £80 million in upgrading branches this financial year.  We have also opened a branch in Glastonbury, Somerset, which has been left without a bank, to test the viability of opening branches with community support.  If successful, we may choose to invest in other communities.”