What to expect from TSB’s latest results tomorrow morning, one year on from Sabadell’s takeover
TSB, the challenger bank snapped up last year by Spain's Banco Sabadell for £1.7bn after being carved out of Lloyds Banking Group in 2014, will report its first quarter results tomorrow morning.
Earlier this year TSB boasted that more than 1,000 new customers were joining it each day, and that it was beating its own target for customers switching or opening a new account – attracting 6.8 per cent, from a target of six per cent.
At the time TSB Bank chief executive Paul Pester told City PM that the challenger bank "definitely went from strength to strength" in 2015, even though profits were down 21 per cent on the previous year, which the bank attributed to investing in new properties and attracting all those new customers.
Expansion plans
More customers and more lending was the target that Pester set out when the bank unveiled its full year results and we will see if the bank has managed to achieve that.
Read more: TSB boss claims "We are the UK's only real challenger bank"
Something that will be working in TSB's favour is that the number of people switching banks in the first part of 2016 grew by 20 per cent over the last quarter of 2015, announced yesterday by economic secretary to the Treasury, Harriett Baldwin. Though TSB won't have picked up all of these, it's likely to have bagged a fair few.
In January TSB reported receiving £5.5bn worth of mortgage applications in 2015, and Pester said he expects the bank's mortgage lending business to continue to grow this year despite risks in the housing market.
CMA investigation into retail banking
The bank will, however, be looking ahead to the Competition and Markets Authority's (CMA) long-awaited review into the retail banking market, after last month revealing it had pushed back publication of the probe until August.
Read more: Challengers say CMA does not go far enough
Pester is particularly proud of the bank's customer service record. The CMA review is likely to look favourably on the bank, which increased its so-called net promoter score, a measure of the difference between the number of customers who are willing to recommend TSB and the number of customers who are unwilling, from nine to 17 over the course of 2015.
IT transition
TSB is currently in the process of moving its IT platform onto that of Sabadell's, something which could be both costly and cause problems for customers. We may get an update on when exactly this is expected to happen and what the final cost is.
As part of the terms of sale between Lloyds Banking Group and Sabadell, Lloyds will pick up the final bill for the transition so it won't weigh on TSB but could still cause disruption that would do that net promoter score no good at all.
Last October, Sabadell revealed plans to move TSB's online banking services from a Lloyds Banking Group platform to a Sabadell model by the end of 2017.
Pester said earlier this year that the banks are "working very hard" on migrating the services, but was quick to add that TSB would "make sure" that the changes benefit customers: "We don't do anything to put our customer's service at risk."