Of this 16% was to first-time buyers which increased by 5% on the previous quarter. The bank’s net mortgage lending decreased by 7% to £423,155m from December 2011.
Over £500 million of mortgages had been offered under the Funding for Lending Scheme by the end of September 2012 and approximately14% of applications received by UK Retail in September related to the new products launched under the scheme.
However RBS reported a £1.26bn pretax loss for the third quarter of 2012 against a £2bn profit a year earlier.
Impacting on profits was the £400m provision for payment protection insurance bringing the total amount set aside to £1.7bn of which £1bn of compensation had already been paid out by 30 September.
Stephen Hester, chief executive of RBS, said the banking industry, including RBS, put short-term gain ahead of long-term excellence for customers but it was making progress towards repairing its reputation.
He said: “Getting this balance right is not done through splashy announcements or sweeping actions. Rather it is a multi-faceted journey involving all our people,the tools and management direction they work with every day.
“We are unambiguously clear at RBS about the importance of making this journey. We have already made much progress though clearly not enough and our reputation will take time and facts to recover from past events which are still being accounted for.”
RBS has forecasted most of the restructuring actions from its 2009 strategic plan will be substantially completed in the next 15-18 months.
