42 V2 Friday March 18 2022 | the times
Business
One Savings Bank notched up record
profits of more than half a billion
pounds on the back of a pick-up in
activity among its landlord customers,
a widening of margins and the release
of bad debt provisions made a year ago.
Shares in the bank, which was
created out of the old Kent Reliance
Building Society and bulked up in 2019
with the purchase of Charter Court Fi-
nancial Services, rose by 69p, or 14.5 per
cent, to 544½p, also boosted by the pro-
mise of a new £100 million buyback.
Andy Golding, chief executive, said
he felt the bank could expand the loan-
Landlords offer rich pickings at One Savings
Patrick Hosking Financial Editor book to its landlord borrower base by
another 10 per cent this year and ex-
pressed confidence in another strong
year for the rental sector, predicting
rent rises of about 3.5 to 4 per cent.
He acknowledged the headwinds
and cost-of-living pressures facing the
British economy but said that many
households were in a strong financial
position, with net savings £275 billion
higher than before the pandemic.
Households were in a good position
to pay higher fuel bills, not least from
savings made by not taking foreign
holidays. Trips made overseas by Brit-
ons fell from 90 million pre-pandemic
to 10 million last year, he added.
The One Savings loanbook grew
10 per cent in 2021 to £20.9 billion. The
net interest margin — the difference
between the bank’s funding rate and its
borrowing rate — would be sustained
after widening last year from 2.53 per-
centage points to 2.82. Arrears were
“broadly stable”.
One Savings specialises in loans to
professional and semi-professional res-
idential landlords, those typically with
four or more properties. It also lends to
property developers. Its main brands
are Precise Mortgages, Charter Savings
Bank and Kent Reliance. A member of
the FTSE 250 with a market value of
£2.4 billion, it floated in 2014.Golding said that the base rate rise
announced yesterday was expected.
While borrowers on variable-rate deals
would see a quarter-point rise in their
rates, half the One Savings loanbook
was on fixed terms.
On the savings side, rates would now
be under review. One Savings typically
pays rates of between 0.5 and 1.5 per
cent, which helped it win 44,000 new
depositors with about £1 billion of bal-
ances last year.
Underlying pre-tax profits in 2021
were £522 million, up by 51 per cent.
Results were boosted by a release of
some bad debt provisions made last
year. After £71 million of impairmentslast time, it reported an impairment
credit of £4.4 million for this year after
releasing £25 million of past provisions.
As well as the new buyback the bank
declared a final dividend of 21.1p, mak-
ing a 26p total, up from 14.5p last time.
It said it had already achieved the
£22 million of annual cost synergies it
targeted when it bought Charter.
One Savings said its balance sheet
was strong with its CET1 ratio improv-
ing to 19.6 per cent from 18.3 per cent.
Analysts at Numis described the re-
sults as “jam today with the prospect of
even more jam tomorrow”. They said
loanbook growth could well be stronger
than the 10 per cent guided for this year.Abrdn’s global head of private equity
has left the company after less than two
years and will not be replaced.
The departure of Mark Redman, 53,
has fuelled speculation that the asset
manager is considering selling its pri-
vate equity business, which it spun out
into a separate unit last year to profit
from the boom in private equity deals.
A spokeswoman for the company
said it had “no desire” to sell the private
equity business and that Redman had
left the company to pursue other op-
portunities: “Mark is an experienced
and successful private markets investor
and leader who leaves our private equi-
ty business positioned for the future.”
Redman did not respond to a request
for a comment. The private equity
leadership team will now report to
Chris Demetriou, 38, who oversees
Abrdn’s investment teams across the
UK, Europe and the Americas.
Before joining Abrdn, Redman wasglobal head of private equity with
Ontario Municipal Employees Retire-
ment System, one of Canada’s biggest
pension funds, where he started their
European private equity operations.
The separation of the private equity
business at Abrdn from property and
infrastructure investment was de-
signed to give it a more effective
operating model with a focus on taking
equity stakes in companies.
It formed part of an effort to reverse
the fortunes of Abrdn, which was
created in 2017 from the merger of
Standard Life with Aberdeen Asset
Management. It manages £542 billion
of assets through funds and pension
fund mandates. Under Stephen Bird, a
former Citigroup banker, it has pushed
deeper into retail and commercial
property investment. When Bird joined
in 2020 he said he wanted to increase
investment in private companies.
Abrdn said the private equity team’s
“underlying investment processes and
teams” would be unchanged.Romi Savova says
PensionBee is on
track to hit targetsAbrdn will leave private
equity chief ’s seat empty
Louisa Clarence-SmithA company set up to help job-hoppers
consolidate their pension pots on a
single platform burnt through £25 mil-
lion in the past year but is confident of
breaking even, by one measure at least,
this year.
PensionBee, which floated in
London in April last year with a market
value of £365 million, said that it would
“reach adjusted earnings before inter-
est, tax, depreciation, amortisation
and marketing costs profitability by
December, assuming relative market
stability across the year”.
The company reported a near dou-
bling of losses before tax from £13.5 mil-
lion to £25 million in 2021 as it spent
£12.9 million on marketing, including a
TV advertising campaign, to scale up its
prospective customer base.
Registered customers, prospective
clients who have started the sign-up
process, grew by 63 per cent to
658,000. Invested customers, those
who have transferred hard assets to
the platform, were up by 70 per cent
to 117,000.
Revenues rose 103 per cent
to £12.8 million. Assets under
administration grew by 91
per cent to £2.59 billion.Pension platform buzzing
as it closes on breakeven
Patrick Hosking Financial Editor Romi Savova, 36, founder and chief ex-
ecutive, said that the company was on
track to deliver against targets set at the
time of its flotation, while its revenue
growth was ahead of guidance.
The average worker can expect to
work for 11 employers during their
career, giving them the headache of
having to juggle as many defined con-
tribution pots.
PensionBee aims to do the work of
organising transfers-out to its own plat-
form, which then puts customer money
in simple tracker investment products.
It charges an annual fee, usually of
between 0.5 and 0.75 per cent.
PensionBee raised £55 million of
fresh capital in the flotation and said its
cash pile stood at £44 million
by the year-end. The
shares were priced at
165p in the float and
closed yesterday at
140¾p, down ½p.
Savova is lobbying
ministers to intro-
duce a pensions
switch guarantee, a
system that would
penalise pension
companies that are
slow in executing
transfers-out.
This can take as
long as six months
and should only take
ten days, she said.