The housing market recovery and new product launches helped underlying profits soar by 155% to £332m at Nationwide, the Swindon-based building society.
Pre-tax profits also climbed – to £270m from £103m – for the six months to September 30 while gross mortgage lending rose 37% to £14bn. 
It opened more than 214,000 new current accounts while 54,000 customers switched to it from rival banks during the period.
Retail savings balances rose by £5.4bn, giving it a 27.5% market share.
Nationwide said the housing market “appears to have turned a corner”. It lent to 30,400 first-time buyers in the six-month period, adding that it now accounted for more than one in five of all first-time buyer mortgages.
The proportion of its residential mortgages that were more than three months in arrears inched down from 0.72% to 0.7% against the same period last year. Nationwide said this was “significantly below” the industry average of 1.75%.
