Shawbrook Bank kept its service standards high leading up to Christmas despite valuers, brokers and staff going on holiday.

In the three weeks before Christmas Shawbrook had to deal with 3,677 items for term loans and 1,269 for short-term, around the same volume the lender processed in the whole of October.

But the lender achieved 48-hour turnaround times on 67.3% of new term loan applications, while on short-term deals it achieved a four hour turnaround in 97.2% of cases.

Karen Bennett, sales & marketing director, commercial mortgages, Shawbrook Bank, said: “Keeping service levels consistent overall for the whole quarter, including the December holiday period, is a testament to the hard work of the lending team as a whole and our broker partners.

“With the New Year off to a flying start, we hope for continued improvement and look forward to January’s results.”

For the whole of quarter four short-term valuations took 4.68 days for refurbishment, 3.76 for residential and 8.59 for commercial.

With term valuations meanwhile residential took 5.64 days, commercial took 11.26 while business valuations were made in 14.4 days on average.