NEWCASTLE Building Society has reached the halfway point in its drive to create 100 jobs during 2016.

As part of a £10m investment programme across the business new roles have been created in departments such as product administration, IT, HR, credit risk, and treasury.

The society's 50th new recruit is Lyndsey Sherwood, who has joined the Newcastle Strategic Solutions team, a subsidiary which provides services to business clients.

Newcastle Building Society is investing £10m in the way it delivers its service to customers with improvements to its branch network, telephone and digital offering, and operational infrastructure, and recently opened two new, purpose-built Branch Advice Centres in central Newcastle.

A new branch will open in Gateshead's Trinity Square development in July.

Andrew Haigh, chief executive at Newcastle Building Society, said: "We're delivering on the investment and recruitment promises that we made at the start of the year, and Lyndsey is an excellent example of the highly-skilled people we're bringing in to ensure we maintain the high quality services both we, and our customers, expect.

"The introduction of our new recruitment system coupled with the launch of our new careers website has given us a real boost, and in what is a highly competitive market, we're attracting a lot of very impressive candidates.

"We're continuing to recruit for a variety of positions across the business, and are on track to hit our target of creating 100 new