Sale of Kensington Mortgages to Barclays Bank UK PLC closes

London, 1 March 2023 – Kensington Mortgages (“Kensington”), the specialist mortgage lender, has today announced the completion of its sale to Barclays Bank UK PLC (“Barclays”). Barclays has acquired the business from funds affiliated with Blackstone Tactical Opportunities (“Blackstone”) and Sixth Street, which jointly owned the business since 2015. The acquisition allows Barclays to become one of the few major banks with a specialist mortgage offering.

Kensington Mortgages, which is based in Maidenhead, has around 600 employees and originated approximately £1.9 billion* of mortgages in the year ended 31 March 2022.

The business is recognised in the industry for having a market-leading data and technology platform, which has facilitated profitable growth, product innovation and exceptional loan underwriting performance.

As part of the acquisition, all of Kensington’s employees will transfer over to Barclays and Kensington will continue day-to-day business operations as usual. The business will retain its brand and be a largely standalone business, but now also benefit from the financial strength, deposit funding base and operational reach of Barclays as it looks to continue its journey of growth and innovation to support a range of borrowers with complex incomes.

Mark Arnold, CEO of Kensington Mortgages, commented: “Today marks the start of an exciting new chapter of growth for Kensington. We have a strong track-record in the specialist mortgage space, using our proprietary technology, data analytics and human insights to design innovative products and make lending decisions to serve our customer base - the self-employed and those with multiple or variable incomes. As a major UK bank with a broad reach and offering, Barclays is well-placed to support our expansion. We look forward to working with them closely to bring our propositions to a wider range of individuals across the UK. And as we enter this new chapter, we would like to thank Blackstone and Sixth Street for all their support and investment over the last 8 years."

*Including Retentions, in the year ended 31 March 2022.


-ENDS-

Notes to Editors
Kensington Mortgages
Aidan Holloway
aidan.holloway@edelmansmithfield.com
+44 (0)203 047 2535

Charlotte Merlin-Jones
charlotte.merlin-jones@edelmansmithfield.com
+44 (0)20 3047 2534

Barclays
Oliver Palca
oliver.stevenson@barclaycard.co.uk
+44 (0)207 116 3837

About Kensington Mortgages

Kensington Mortgages was founded in 1995. The business was acquired by Blackstone and Sixth Street in 2015, initiating a period of considerable growth and investment. The mortgage servicing business Acenden was also acquired by the same investors and merged with Kensington, creating a broader UK mortgage business.

Since the acquisition, Kensington has more than tripled the number of underwriters it employs and almost quadrupled its origination volumes. Kensington lent £1.9bn* in new mortgages (including retentions) for the year ended 31st March 2022.

A clear period of growth was initiated with the arrival of Mark Arnold as CEO in April 2018. Under the guidance of the leadership team, Kensington consolidated a number of disparate legacy brands under a revitalised Kensington identity, launched a best-in-class, data and analytics driven and highly scalable integrated technology platform, sharpened its market positioning and launched a range of new and innovative products. These include mortgages for public sector workers, products that reward borrowers for improving the environmental credentials of their home and a new fixed for term mortgage where monthly payments remain fixed for the entire term of the loan.

The business has very strong credit controls. Only 19 loans issued by Kensington Mortgages since 2010 have gone into default, with the total cumulative losses on those loans amounting to just £252,000.

About Barclays Group
Barclays PLC is a British universal bank. It is diversified by business, by different types of customer and client, and geography. Its businesses include consumer banking and payments operations around the world, as well as a top-tier, full service, global corporate and investment bank, all of which are supported by its service company which provides technology, operations and functional services across the Group. For further information about Barclays, please visit its website home.barclays.