Lloyds Group Offers More New Loans Than Any Other Lender
The credit crunch has had a huge impact on banks, building societies and other loan companies in the UK, with the majority reducing the amount of loans they are able to offer due to limited wholesale funding and a large number of lenders withdrawing from the homeowner loan and secured loan markets altogether.
As a result of this, far fewer providers are able to offer new loans to customers, particularly smaller lenders and it seems to be just the banking industry giants who are left to provide homeowner loans and mortgages for everybody, a fact which has been borne out by the latest figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML).
According to the CML’s figures, the Lloyds Banking group offered more new loans to individuals over the course of 2008, than any other lender and actually accounted for a staggering 30.2 per cent of the whole homeowner loan market. This was more than double the amount of the second place lender, the Spanish bank Santander, who accounted for 13.7 per cent of the market, with the Nationwide in third place with 11.2 per cent.
This says a lot for how the homeowner loan and mortgage industry has been affected over the course of the past two years, when just three lenders can account for more than half of all the loans offered over the course of a full year.
The total amount of new homeowner loans during 2008 was down to £261 billion, from £364 billion in the previous year, showing a drop of 28 per cent. Specialist loan companies, most of whom do not offer savings accounts and are therefore unable to use savings customers money to fund loans, have struggled more than other lenders, due to their inability to access suitable funding through wholesale money markets and as a result of this, many have disappeared from the market place altogether.
The question is, how long will it take these companies to return and offer their specialist loan services to customers once the economy has eventually recovered?
