Nationwide stops lending on some flood-risk properties

Banks may follow suit after UK weather-related claims on home insurance reach new high

Britain's biggest building society has stopped granting mortgages on some properties where there is a high risk of flooding but said this affected only a very limited number" of homes.

Nationwide's head of property risk, Rob Stevens, said the lender used mapping technology to identify which homes were vulnerable to flooding, and it would decline to grant a mortgage to buy a property it deemed to be at high risk.