01 August 2009 Credits: www.skynews.com
Crisis? What Banking Crisis?

That's right, the banking crisis is sooooo last year. Abbey's has just announced profits for the six months to end of June are an impressive £790 million (up 30%) and over the next few weeks they'll be plenty more where that came from (with the exception of course of the banks we have stakes in - Lloyds is expected to post another set of heavy losses).

Interestingly Abbey says that it also making money on Alliance and Leicester (swallowed by Santander in January) and Bradford and Bingley (Santander bought B&B's branches, 2 million customers and staff from the government last September, after the bank was nationalised - wasn't interested in the mortgage book).

Abbey says the integration of the businesses is "ahead of plan", throughout 2010 all brands will be absorbed into the "Santander".

Abbey boasts that not only are profits up but more people and businesses are choosing to bank with them (retail and corporate deposits have increased by £4.7 bn).

As for the downturn well arrears on the Abbey mortgage book are "as expected" (whatever that means) although repossessions are "significantly lower than the industry average", in part because the bank says it is "assisting customers with affordability problems".

Not only is Abbey helping those struggling to manage mortgage repayments, the bank is also doing it's bit for the economy by increasing mortgage lending and loans to companies.

So, hurrah for Abbey! Not quite.

A quick hunt around on Moneyfacts will show you that while Abbey is only too happy to offer mortgage deals to customers with large slabs of equity in their home or intimidatingly large deposits - it ain't keen on doing business with anyone in negative equity.

Infact not only do Abbey's most competitive deals fail to make it anywhere near a Moneyfacts "Best Buy" table but if you are looking for a loan to value mortgage of more than 75% then forget it.

This is a bank that's making money by being conservative and keeping its margins as high as possible.