Specialist finance provider, Shawbrook, has announced its full-year results for the year ended 31st December 2023.
Reporting another exceptional year in 2023, Shawbrook’s full-year results demonstrated their consistent focus on growth and efficiency, delivering an underlying profit before tax of £302 million and an underlying cost to income ratio of 38.2%.
Shawbrook’s ‘best of both’ approach, combining the expertise of its people with advanced digital, technology and data capabilities, enabled the finance provider to deliver a specialist proposition at scale while maintaining operational efficiency.
Shawbrook’s loan book grew by 24% to £13.3 billion from £10.5 billion in FY 2022, following continued strong originations in their core SME and property markets.
Strong profitability was maintained, achieving 27% growth in underlying profit before tax to £302 million, compared to £238 million in 2022.
Strategic highlights for the year included the continued investment in digital capabilities, deploying innovative solutions across the business to streamline and accelerate customer journeys. By expanding their auto-decisioning capabilities within their digital SME lending proposition, more certainty was given to customers with faster decisions.
Shawbrook also launched new products in 2023, including a digital SME term loan product to support businesses to finance capital expenditure.
Marcelino Castrillo (pictured), Shawbrook’s Chief Executive Officer, commented: “Our approach has again delivered a strong set of results, generating an underlying profit before tax of £302 million and underlying return on tangible equity of 20.2%.
"From growth businesses to professional property investors, consumers and homeowners, more customers than ever are choosing Shawbrook to meet their specific and often event-driven funding needs, driving loan book growth of 24%1 in 2023. By delivering a premium experience, choice and consistently great value to c.350,000 savers, we also grew our savings franchise to £13.6 billion.
"The business model we have created is unique and difficult to replicate, centred around our ‘best of both’ approach that combines deep human expertise with advanced digital, technology and data capabilities. This enables us to serve customers at scale, while maintaining operational efficiency with our underlying cost to income ratio reducing further to 38.2%.
"Technology continues to accelerate the pace of change across the financial services industry, driven by AI and machine learning. The Group is embracing this opportunity to transform our customer and colleague experience. This has so far included the implementation of new cloud contact-centre technology, driving enhanced customer experience with in-depth sentiment analysis helping us to identify customers that may require additional support. We have also embedded generative AI into our software development workflow to support agility and drive productivity gains for our engineers.
"While the macroeconomic landscape continues to evolve, we are encouraged by both the resilient performance we have delivered to date and the improving sentiment seen across our markets. The attractive returns we generate year on year give us the confidence to continue to pursue our ambition - to deliver for more customers in more markets by combining the innovative mindset and agility of a start-up with the scale and financial strength of a large business.
"The embedded optionality of the platform we have created at Shawbrook enables us to both react quickly to attractive inorganic opportunities as they arise, whilst continuing to pursue the significant organic growth we see in our existing markets.”
Shawbrook Group’s 2023 Annual Report and Accounts can be downloaded at https://www.shawbrook.co.uk/investors/
