British Internet bank Egg said today its losses during the second quarter had narrowed from a year ago and it was confident over its credit quality and its core business.
Egg, 79 per cent owned by insurer Prudential, said it made a loss of £1.2 million sterling (€1.9 million) during the second quarter - down from a loss of £25.5 million a year ago.
Egg's credit card business has benefited from historically low interest rates and low unemployment in Britain, although a deteriorating economic environment has seen concerns grow over banks' exposure to bad debts.
Egg acquired 362,000 net new customers during the first half, taking its total customer base to over 2.3 million, well above those of rival online banks such as Abbey National's Cahoot and HBOS's Intelligent Finance.
Egg shares closed at 143p yesterday. The stock has outperformed the FTSE banking sector by about 5 per cent in the past year.