Website branding from Virgin Money (VM.) has animals wearing summer garb under the taglines 'Get ready for summer' and 'Take it easy'. But there was no need to dress up the challenger bank's half-year figures. A 37 per cent increase in underlying profits to £81.8m prompted a maiden interim dividend and sent the shares up over 13 per cent on the day - pretty "groovy", as its marketing team would have it.
The challenger bank outperformed on most of its key metrics. Net interest income, which factors in expenses, was up 27 per cent at £220m. That was driven by gross mortgage lending of £3.6bn, an increase of 44 per cent on last year's first half. In reaction to pricing pressure in the residential sector, the company tweaked its product mix to focus on the higher-yielding buy-to-let market.