Nationwide Building Society expects to beat expectations for Irish market
The company has reported a group-wide underlying pre-tax profit of £117 million (€130m) for the six months to the end of September, compared to a profit of £322m for the corresponding period last year.
The society launched an online savings service in Ireland, under the Nationwide UK (Ireland) name at the end of March.
The company’s deputy managing director for Ireland, Brendan Synnott, said: “To date, we are very pleased with the response we have received from Irish savers to our range of savings products. We’re in line to meet, and in some quarters surpass, our goals for our first trading year.
“The appeal of our initial product offering has allowed us to broaden our savings product range and continue to offer very competitive rates and a safe, secure home for savers and we’re confident that we can continue to grow our business in the Irish savings market.”
At the launch of Nationwide’s Irish arm earlier this year, managing director Carl Gandy said growth here would mainly be organic. He said apart from a small level in Britain, the business does not tend to look to grow via acquisition. He said building a high street retail network was not in Nationwide’s mid-term plans for Ireland.
On a group-wide basis, Nationwide chief executive Graham Beale said market conditions continue to be challenging. “Our performance has been substantially affected by the low interest rate environment and the dramatic fall in commercial property valuations, which have led to compression in our margin and a sustained higher level of impairments in line with our experience during the second half of last year,” he added.
He said the group remains profitable on the back of its conservative business model and its choice not to “chase market share in a retail savings market, which is subject to serious competitive distortion and uneconomic pricing”.
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