Heritable Bank rides out market storm

Alongside this growth, it has also reached £1.1bn loan assets, 41 per cent asset growth and 40 per cent deposit growth.

Customer numbers are also up 57 per cent to 23,600.

Mark Sismey-Durrant, the bank's chief executive, commented: "Performance for the first nine months of 2007 has been extremely pleasing for the Bank’s operations with very strong growth across our diversified lending businesses.

"Heritable Bank is mostly funded by deposits which has positioned us well against the recent market turmoil, and helped us deliver excellent results in terms of profit and return on equity. We are well positioned to take advantage of business opportunities arising in the current marketplace."

Ketan Malde, chief operating officer and finance director, added: "These results announced today demonstrate the Bank’s strong growth with pre-tax operating profit up 60 per cent on the same period in 2006 due to improved net interest margin, strong fee income and lower cost/income ratio. The Bank has strong capital ratios and asset quality remains good.

"We are on track to deliver scale, combined with long-term sustainable profitable growth across all areas of our operations."