Coventry bucks trend with rising profits

The building society reports that pre-tax profits for the period until the end of June rose to £36.2m, from £35.5m last year. Operating profit rose to £40.1m, up from £38.3m in the first half of 2008, while profit after tax was £31.1m, up from £25.1m. During the period, the firm says 1.06% of mortgages, buy-to-let included, were more than three months in arrears, compared with the Council of Mortgage Lenders' (CML) average of 2.43%. Meanwhile, write downs on expected bad loans rose to £7.9m, up from £2.8m from the year before, but Coventry says this was still low compared with othe...