Leeds Building Society has reported an increase in new residential lending of 20% to £921m for the first six months of the year, compared to £769m for the same period in 2012.

Net residential lending was 26% higher at £423m, while savings balances grew by £521m to a record £8.3bn.

Pre-tax profit increased by 13% in the first half of 2013 to £30.6m (£27.1m, 30 June 2012).

Chief Executive, Peter Hill, said: “Leeds Building Society continues to provide security and value to its savers and support home ownership. I am also delighted that our mutual model has great appeal and we now have more members than at any time in our history.

“New loans rose to £921m, which continues our commitment to the mortgage market, following our strong performance throughout 2012. We have particular expertise in the first-time-buyer (FTB) sector and 30% of our lending, over £280m of completions, has helped almost 3,000 members to purchase their first home.

“We intend to increase new lending further this year and recently launched our unique Welcome Mortgage range, which offers borrowers a combination of flexibility and certainty over a 3 or 5-year term. This range is available up to 90% LTV and members have the option of paying 0% on the first 3 or 6 months of their mortgage, with the remaining monthly payments at a fixed rate for up to 3 or 5 years. We believe this innovation will support many more FTBs onto the housing ladder and enable other borrowers to achieve their home ownership aspirations.

“We continue to provide our members with competitive savings products backed up by excellent service, and we had a particularly strong ISA season. This combination has resulted in savings balances increasing by £521m in the first half of the year, to a record £8.3bn. Furthermore, this success means that all of the Society’s residential mortgage balances are funded entirely by retail deposits.”

He added: “Our successful savings strategy has enabled us to reduce our wholesale funding ratio to 17.4% (19.0%, 30 June 2012). Whilst members’ deposits remain the major component of our traditional building society business, we continue to benefit from access to diverse sources of funding and successfully completed our debut public securitisation in July 2013, raising £300m. We also continue to utilise the Funding for Lending Scheme to support our mortgage lending aspirations and have now drawn a total of £250m.”