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Building Societies - better service and better products

9th November 2007 Print
Building Society service standards are higher than that of their competitors AND they lead the way by offering the most competitive mortgage and savings products over the long term.

These were the comments of Iain Cornish, Chairman of the Building Societies Association (BSA) and Chief Executive of the Yorkshire Building Society, speaking yesterday at the BSA's Annual Lunch.

Referring to independent research undertaken on behalf of the Association, he noted "building society savers and borrowers are significantly more satisfied with the services which they receive from building societies, than are customers of banks* the whole building society model is more transparent, simpler, more prudent and more trusted and we simply do not have the same motivation as banks to take massive risk positions in pursuit of profits for shareholders" .

The BSA Chairman went on to quote two recent reports from Moneyfacts in which building societies account for over 70% of all savings products offering the best rates over the last 18 and 36 months. Societies also account for 70% of the top 250 mortgages available today across the whole market. He gave reassurance, however, that societies are not compromising on financial safety to achieve these highs.

Turning to the current situation with Northern Rock plc, he said "it is imperative to us that the future of Northern Rock is sorted out as soon as possible. The reputation of UK financial services, and the future progress of the mortgage market, will be heavily influenced by the outcome of current events. The credibility of the tri-partite arrangements needs to be re-built - indeed from a regulatory, economic and consumer perspective it is hard to see a more pressing priority than these two issues."