The group saw a 14% surge in customer deposits to £12.4bn, with strong performance across personal, business and corporate.

While the overall net lending to customers was up 8% to £13.4bn, the lender saw a 5% drop in business finance lending to £3.1bn.

It attributed this to customer activity levels being significantly impacted during lockdown periods, and the group deciding to only participate in CBILS and RLS from the range of government Covid-19 assistance schemes. 

However, net loans are in line with December 2020 as customer activity has increased in recent months.

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Steven Cooper, CEO at Aldermore Group (pictured above), said: “During the year, we’ve delivered a robust performance and achieved growth through a period of unprecedented economic uncertainty. 

“Our priorities throughout the Covid-19 pandemic have been to support our customers as well as safeguard our colleagues’ wellbeing. 

“We helped almost 200,000 customers buy a vehicle and increased deposits by 14% with our consistently competitive savings products. 

“We also granted payment breaks to almost 57,000 customers, with 98% now resuming full repayments, and provided over 800 SMEs with government-backed funding.

“As the UK begins to recover from the pandemic, we’re working even harder to ensure that SMEs and individuals can seize the opportunities that lie ahead. 

“We’re enhancing our customer propositions across the group by providing tailored commercial mortgage products, delivering industry-leading motor finance with our MotoRate pricing solution, reintroducing our wide residential mortgage product range, and continuing to support business and personal savers with our award-winning offering. 

“We’re also increasing investment in technology, people, customer experience and operating capacity to ensure the group can deliver on its longer-term growth ambitions, and ensure we continue to provide customers with a great experience and competitive products they’ve come to expect from us.”