The West Brom aims to get young saving

West Bromwich Building Society chief executive Jonathan Westhoff said the society was looking at creative ways to "get them saving."

Mr Westhoff said the desire was there across the building society sector to get the message across.

"One of the things that hopefully might come out of the pandemic is a new generation with greater understanding of the need to have a bit of financial resilience – a savings cushion for emergencies.

"It is imperative to find ways to get young people into the habit of saving and build that resilience up,"

The society, which attracted 4,513 new savers last year, offered savings rates 41 per cent higher than average across the market.

IT resulted in delivering a total of £5.3 million to its savers, two-thirds of whom are from its local area across the West Midlands.

He said that a focus for the society through the pandemic had been to improve how its members were coping with their finances.

There had also been an emphasis on looking after people having a potentially worrying time meeting mortgage payments.

The West Brom developed a quick and easy online portal to apply for a mortgage payment deferral period, enabling 5,570 deferrals in total.

"It is fantastic to see that 99 per cent are already back up and running in resuming payments," said Mr Westhoff.

The society also saw a 38 per cent increase in mortgage lending to £784 million despite the pandemic in the year to the end of March.

It is still facing a pipeline of new applications, especially from people getting into the property market for the first time, in the first half of the current financial year with people becoming a little more confident in their outlook and looking to buy homes.

The West Brom is endeavouring to ensure that loan to value mortgages are suitable for first-time buyers.

It has also been the first society in the country to launch products to help those defined as "mortgage prisoners" trapped by high interest rates.

"It has been going for eight to nine months and as we expected once it was out there others have come in to help those borrowers, but it is still an area in which more needs to be done to help as many as we can.

"It is estimated that there may be 250,000 mortgage prisoners – many who can't apply for standard mortgage products," added Mr Westhoff.