LONDON, (Reuters) – Nationwide Building Society reports half-year profits exceedingly doubled on Friday. This is as Britain continues its economic recovery.

For the six-months to September, the pretax profits from the customer-owned lender of mortgages were 853 million pounds ($1.15 trillion) compared to 361 million pounds last year.

Nationwide is the second largest provider of loans for homeowners in Britain. It competes with big banks, but its customers own it.

Nationwide managed to improve profits during the COVID-19 Pandemic. This was partly due to cutting costs, taking lower provisions against possible bad loans and not lending to companies.

Nationwide reported higher earnings than other British banks in recent weeks. This was due to the release of cash that it had saved against bad debts but that didn’t materialize.

As the economy improved, the lender was able to unlock 34 million pounds worth of these provisions. This is compared to the same time last year when it had taken a charge for 139 million pounds against bad loans.

($1 = 0.7407 pounds)