RICHARD Banks, boss of Crossflatts-based UK Asset Resolution, the state-owned bank behind failed lenders Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock, is switching to run the business which recently bought its mortgage-processing operations.

He will become chief executive of Computershare Mortgage Services Ltd to which UKAR is outsourcing £30 billion of mortgages in a deal which also transfers 1,700 UKAR staff.

Computershare. which also owns Skipton-based Homeloans Management, said the deal means it servicing three out of every five outsourced UK mortgages from next month.

Ian Hares, UKAR finance and investment director, will become chief executive.

UKAR also announced a possible major sales drive of B&B mortgages to pay back £15.65 billion to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

In the year to March 31, UKAR reduced its mortgage book by another £22.8 billion, bringing the total reduction to £72.5 billion since 2010.

It repaid £6.3 billion of government loans, making total repayments of £20.4 billion, equivalent to 42 per cent.

Underlying pre-tax profit was down 25 per cent to £1.05 billion,which mainly reflected a 33 per cent reduction in lending balances through loan sales and customer redemptions.

Around £13 billion of customer loans were sold to Cerberus Capital Management.

Mr Banks said: “UKAR has achieved excellent results driven by our capabilities in debt management and asset sales and reflecting the hard work of all our people. The outsourcing of our mortgage servicing activities to Computershare is good news for customers and colleagues.”