This marks loan book growth of 26.2%, a record level for the specialist lender and helped lead to record profits before tax of £94.4m.

The lender also celebrates the completion of its The Mortgage Lender acquisition, which it says will widen its “originate to distribute optionality.”

In its report, Shawbrook also reveals it provided mortgage holidays of £1.9bn, with the “majority” of these borrowers returning to payment status. Arrears peaked at 3.6% in June 2020 and have since decreased to 1.9%.

Shawbrook Group chief executive Marcelino Castrillo says: “Strong performance in the first half of 2021 was driven by demand for our specialist propositions in our core SME and property markets.

“Deep sector expertise, combined with our technology-enabled model and proven resilience, have allowed us to continue to support our customers against a challenging, but improving, macroeconomic backdrop. This was reflected in our record origination levels and our loan book reaching £8bn as at June 2021.”

And chief financial officer Dylan Minto comments: “As the economy recovers from the lockdown impacts of the pandemic, the investment in the digitalisation of our customer proposition, backed by solid operational resilience, meant that we were well placed to support our customers as confidence returns to our specialist lending markets.”