Building Societies Association

The Building Societies Association

The Building Societies Association (BSA) is the trade association for all the UK's building societies. 

View a list of all building societies

This website contains a broad range of information about building societies and the BSA. We have tried to make it easy to use. Areas of the website are dedicated to our key audiences - consumers, policy makers, the media and our members, the building societies. We hope you can find on this website all the information you need about building societies and the BSA .

 


What's the difference between a building society and a bank?

A building society is a mutual institution. This means that most people who have a savings account, or mortgage, are members and have certain rights to vote and receive information, as well as to attend and speak at meetings. Each member has one vote, regardless of how much money they have invested or borrowed or how many accounts they may have. Each building society has a board of directors who run the society and who are responsible for setting its strategy.

Building societies are different from banks, which are companies (normally listed on the stock market) and are therefore owned by, and run for, their shareholders. Societies have no external shareholders requiring dividends and are not companies. This normally enables them to run on lower costs and offer cheaper mortgages, better rates of interest on savings and better levels of service than their competitors.  See the BSA's recent report on Customer Service here. 

The other major difference between building societies and banks is that there is a limit on the proportion of their funds that building societies can raise from the wholesale money markets.  A building society may not raise more than 50% of its funds from the wholesale markets.  The average proportion of funds raised by building societies from the wholesale markets is 30%.

To view a full list of building societies please click here.

To view a full list of former building societies that have converted to banks please click here.

 

In the Consumers section you can find out much more about building societies and the benefits of mutuality

Changing the way you write cheques - safeguarding against fraud
The BSA's advice leaflet.

Lost Savings - How Building Societies help you find your lost savings.
The BSA's leaflet.

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In this Policy section you can find the BSA's views on a wide range of policy issues, including Consumer Relations and Savings Policy.

Consumer Relations

BSA Savings Policy

More policy areas

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This area has been designed to provide journalists with easy access to information about the BSA and the building society sector.

Press Releases
Click here to view all press releases issued by the BSA.

Policy & Information
In this Policy section you can find the BSA's views on a range of policy issues.

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This section contains statistics on the building society sector in the UK.

Building Society Sector

Mortgages

Savings

More key statistics

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