Our webmaster cooperative is just switching from a building society to a cooperative bank because of support for free software and web standards in their online banking – I’ve just given up waiting for it. That’s disappointing, but the building society has given pretty good service over the years and were early accepters of our LLP company type. For comparison, look at this list of building societies which converted to banks late last century, which have been in the news lately:-
- National and Provincial Building Society was taken over by Abbey National
- Abbey National was itself taken over by Banco Santander
- Alliance + Leicester is being bought by Banco Santander
- Birmingham Midshires was bought by the Halifax
- Halifax was bought by Bank of Scotland to form HBOS, which is now merging into Lloyds TSB
- Cheltenham and Gloucester was bought by Lloyds TSB
- Bristol and West was bought by the Bank of Ireland
- The Woolwich was bought by Barclays plc
- Northern Rock, nationalised earlier this year
- Bradford and Bingley, nationalisation announced today
So that’s it. All gone. 0% survival rate of demutualised building societies. I’ll be amazed if any more convert in future.
You forgot the first demutualisation – TSB itself!
/me happy to have been with the Nationwide since the late 80s. And their online banking works well for me with a good range of browsers. Annoyances yes; showstoppers no.
My family had accounts at the local Trustee Savings Bank for years, but it didn’t demutualise – because it was never a mutual. It was a legally unique form, until the 1980s Thatcher government put it on the road to privatisation – and ultimately loss of independence by merging with Lloyds.
I know it’s not the same but the mortgage book of Bristol and West lives on in mutuality at Britannia Building Society.
Many B+W branches became Britannia branches too, including Weston-super-Mare. Thanks for letting me know it’s more than that. I’ve been impressed by Britannia’s “fair” adverts, but not really had much to do with them yet.
Yes, I forgot about the branches. Every B+W branch moved to Britannia, though where Britannia already had a branch some were shutdown on either side.
(I worked there for a year, partly during the merge)
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