£77m debt written off

CLYDESDALE and Yorkshire Banking Group (CYBG) has been hit by a rise in customers struggling to pay their credit card bills.

It wrote off £77m in the six months to March. This was up from £48m of impairments for the same period a year earlier.

The lender bought Virgin Money in a £1.7bn deal last year. While Virgin was heavily reliant on long interest-free offers to lure new customers, CYBG scaled back this practice.

The lender reported profits of £ 9m in the period, down from £46m a year earlier.

This was chiefly driven by one-off costs related to the Virgin deal.