Metro Bank, the revolutionary high street bank, has today unveiled a pioneering move to support the sharing economy, by enabling its residential mortgage customers to rent their properties through Airbnb, and similar sites, for up to 90 days a year without prior approval.

Paul Riseborough, Chief Commercial Officer at Metro Bank commented: “At Metro Bank we love what the sharing economy represents and the freedom and collaboration it encourages. Our focus is on making our customers’ lives as straightforward and convenient as possible and we therefore hope today’s news will give our customers the reassurance they need to jump in and take advantage of everything the dynamic sharing economy has to offer”.

James McClure, General Manger at UK & Ireland Airbnb said: “The way people use their homes is changing and this is an exciting step change from one of the UK’s most innovative banks. We hope this triggers further support from the mortgage industry as we work together to provide real economic benefits for people and neighbourhoods.”

Metro Bank has a strong track record of challenging industry norms, from becoming the first bank to lend through a peer-to-peer lender with its alliance with Zopa, to enabling customers to link their business accounts directly to Xero to manage their finances; making manual uploads and downloads a thing of the past.

This latest news follows a strong set of Q3 results, which saw lending up 73% year-on-year to £5.2bn and deposits increase to £7.3bn, up 66% compared to 30 September 2015. Customer account numbers also grew to 848,000, record quarterly growth of 68,000.