CEO reveals off-the-cuff statistic at meeting of Treasury select committee

RBS Group — the banking conglomerate that owns mortgage lenders Natwest, Royal Bank Of Scotland, Ulsterbank, First Active and Coutts & Co — claimed that it had stepped "into the breach" of UK mortgage lending since many other lenders had disappeared from the market.

Its chief executive Stephen Hester, speaking before a panel of MPs, described the bank as something of a safe haven for beleagured borrowers:

"[I]f you are someone in search of a mortgage, nine out of ten times we will sell this to you […] I think that is an appropriate statistic."

If that's really true, borrowers with 75 per cent loan to value ought to put this claim to the test and besiege RBS for one of their 3.75%, £299 fee, variable tracker mortgages with no tie-in period (i.e. you can be off again when rates do the inevitable).  Feel free to report back any experiences in the comments!

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has increased its mortgage margins by up to 0.7% in order to maximise its benefit from low wholesale funding costs.

The question is, should a taxpayer-owned bank be restricted from making more money off its existing customers, the majority of who are taxpayers paying now and in the future to support the bank that almost failed?

Public ownership controversies aside, RBS isn't the only lender to raise margins while the base rate seems to be staying at rock bottom for the long run.

Nationwide, for example, has also raised its rates by a similar amount.  It's possible that both lenders are doing this to dissuade a surplus of applications on certain products.

Of course, it's nothing new that mortgage lenders take advantage of falling base rates to boost their own margins. Michelle Slade, of Moneyfacts.co.uk, noted that "lenders remain slow to act on the falling cost of funding. [They] are quick to pass additional costs on when [base rates] are rising, but are less keen to put rates back down again when the cost of funding declines."

RBS attracts a different kind of criticism because of its high-profile rescue with public money. Do you think this criticism is justified?