The Golden Cross Inn was at the heart of the Building Societies 250th Anniversary Conference in Birmingham in May.  Many of our speakers referred back to the founding of the first known building society in the original Golden Cross Inn in 1775.  A re-incarnated Golden Cross serving the excellent co-operatively brewed Ketley’s Golden Cross Celebration Ale formed one of the focal points of our exhibition hall.  All we need now for the circle to complete is for a building society to open up a branch in one of the UK’s brilliant community-owned pubs…

Our annual conference has been growing steadily in recent years as members, associates, exhibitors and friends of the sector have found increasing value in coming together over a couple of days to spend time together in person, to gain fresh ideas and inspiration.  And with over 1,300 delegates, exhibitors and speakers this year, there was a real buzz from the moment registration opened until the end of the conference dinner.  With so many people, including many guests from around the world, it was wonderful to feel that we had still retained that sense of being one big family.

And family is so important.  Family was the inspiration behind that first building society.  Ordinary working men in the early days of the industrial revolution setting out to buy land and build decent homes for themselves and their families.  When we speak about using our past as inspiration for our futures, what more inspiration do we need?  The need for decent affordable housing for ordinary working people and their families remains as relevant today as it was back in 1775.

The difference, perhaps, is that the founders of our movement were probably not thinking too much about the legacy they were creating for us.  They simply wanted to escape appalling housing conditions and rogue, rip-off landlords.  We have both the opportunity and the responsibility to take a much longer term view.  We can think about the mutual legacy we want to leave for future generations.  For me that has always been the crux of stewardship responsibility – not just to pass on the organisation at the end of our tenure in a better state than we inherited it, but to pass it on fit for the future.

That represents a sizeable challenge in such a rapidly changing and worryingly unstable world.  We need constantly to innovate, to re-invest in the business, to engage with current and future groups of members, to meet their needs and help fulfil their dreams of home ownership.  We need constantly to seek inspiration, insight, fresh ideas, experiences from around the world.

The key message that I wanted to leave delegates with was simple and challenging in equal measure.

The future is mutual if we want it to be.  But only if we want it to be and do everything in our individual and collective power to achieve that outcome.

If we continue to focus on meeting the needs of society, we will continue to flourish.

If we continue to focus on our members as individuals, we will find the ways to navigate the rapidly evolving AI and technology revolution.

If we continue to focus on developing our understanding of excellence in mutual governance, we will deal successfully with all the uproar going on around us.

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