B&B purchases loan

Bradford & Bingley has purchased a mortgage loan portfolio from GMAC-RFC for £410m.

This is the fourth and final purchase resulting from an agreement made in January 2005 to acquire up to £1.4bn of loans during 2005 from GMAC-RFC.

The purchase, funded from B&B's existing resources, has been made by Mortgage Express, its wholly owned subsidiary.

This latest loan portfolio acquisition will increase the Bradford & Bingley Group's total managed assets, which stood at £39bn on June 30 2005, by around 1%.

All lending in the portfolio is secured on UK residential property and has a similar credit risk profile to previous portfolio acquisitions.

In addition to reviewing the credit controls GMAC-RFC employed in originating the loan portfolio, Mortgage Express has tested the loan book using its own credit scoring process to confirm that it meets the B&B Group's credit standards.

The acquired mortgages are, by value, approximately 16% buy-to-let, 46% self cert mortgages with the remainder standard mortgages. The book has an average loan size of approximately £128,000 and an average LTV of approximately 77%.