Nationwide Building Society has confirmed it is in talks with Sainsbury's Bank to buy the supermarket chain's £1.9 billion mortgage book.
First reported by Sky News, the UK building society is believed to be within weeks of completing a transaction that would add about 10,000 people to Nationwide's base of 1.7m mortgage customers.
A Nationwide spokesman said in response to an enquiry: "We can confirm we are in discussions with Sainsbury's Bank regarding the purchase of its mortgage book.
Sainsbury's Bank is following rival supermarket bank Tesco in deciding to exit the home loans market as cheap funding orchestrated by government schemes comes to an end.