Ipswich Building Society has reaffirmed its commitment to support so-called “mortgage misfits” – people who don’t match the standard criteria of many bigger lenders.

Speaking at the society’s annual general meeting, held at Trinity Park, Ipswich, chief executive Paul Winter said the approach was proving a success, by meeting a need in the market place without having an negative impact on arrears levels.

“Our mission is to enable people to have a home of their own, so we look at the best ways of achieving this aim,” Mr Winter told the audience of around 200 members at the event.

“That means treating applicants as individuals with their own specific needs. Our Mortgage Misfits campaign was acknowledged on a national level as being one that was innovative and necessary.

“People’s lives don’t fit into neat boxes that can be assessed by computer programmes.

“We have a highly experienced underwriting team who can judge the crucial ability of a potential borrower to pay their mortgage. We must be getting it right as our mortgage arrears figures are below national averages and are continuing to fall.”

Society chairman Sarah Evans said 70% of the society’s lending last year was to to people buying a home in East Anglia and 93% would be classed as “prime residential lending”. “In summary, we are able to lend money to good quality borrowers, many of whom are in our local area – an area we know well,” she added.

Guest speaker at the meeting was Dr Suzannah Lipscomb, the presenter of BBC4’s Hidden Killers series and Channel 5’s Witch Hunt: A Century of Murder, who talked about the importance of understanding history and what it teach us.

As previously reported, the society reported a reduced profit of £1.9million for 2015, down to £3.8m in 2014, following a year in which is largely focused on IT investment. However, it actively returned to the mortgage market in the second half of last year.