Jim Coupe, managing director of Skipton International, said his building society was thriving on the island, and “continuing to plan for future growth”.
Earlier this week Skipton reported that 2012 had been the third year in a row it had been Guernsey’s No. 1 provider of new mortgages, based on total amounts lent. More than one in five of all new mortgages on the island were arranged by Skipton’s mortgage specialists, the data showed.
Of course, Coupe said, Skipton’s business model was different from that of some of the other institutions that have found the business more challenging, such as those that involve upstreaming large sums to parent entities located elsewhere, such as the UK.
Changes in the ways that deposit-taking banks in Guernsey are permitted to handle the monies they collect have resulted in the lending back to onshore parents being “no longer as attractive” as it once was, Coupe noted, which is why Skipton discontinued this some time ago, to focus on more profitable strategies. Such as mortgages.
“Since 2002 we have been an active participant in the Guernsey mortgage market, and since 2005 we have been an important lender in Jersey too, where now [more than] 1,000 homeowners have a Skipton International mortgage,” Coupe said.
“Our business is therefore very different from that of a pure deposit taker, we are in effect more like a traditional building society, active both in the lending and savings markets, which complement each other and make for a more stable and longer term business approach.”
Skipton International is a wholly owned subsidiary of Skipton Building Society, Britain’s fourth-largest building society, with nearly £14bn in assets.
As reported, Clydesdale Bank International, the Guernsey-based offshore arm of Clydesdale Bank, said it was closing to new business following a review of its operations. Other banks that have also handed in their banking licences on the island over the last few years have included the HSBC Bank International arm of HSBC; Bank of New York Mellon (CI); Yorkshire Building Society; Northern Rock; EFG SA; and Ansbacher. The Guernsey subsidiary of Iceland’s Landsbanki closed its doors in 2008, after its parent collapsed, leaving around 1,600 depositors out-of-pocket.
In total, there are some 32 licenced banks on the island now, holding total deposits of around £96.9bn,compared with 48 institutions at the end of 2008, with some £157bn on deposit – the island’s all-time peak in terms of deposits.
