The aim of this meeting for us today is to show you the Building societies.
First I'm going to define the building societies... Then Marie is going to talk about the story of the building companies and to conclude, Chloëe is going to present the big building companies and where they exsist.
A building society is a financial institution, owned by its members, that offers banking and other financial services, especially mortgage lending.
The first building societies were formed about two hundred years ago when some people got together to co-operate with each other in building their own houses. Members regularly contributed to the society and built the houses together. Each completed house was allocated by lottery to a member. They carried on until each member had his own house. The society, the house-building co-operative, was then dissolved. After a while building societies began to borrow money from investors to build houses more quickly and this was the start of permanent building societies, now simply called building societies. Then about one hundred years ago, most UK building societies stopped building houses and concentrated on providing capital for building houses, on providing mortgages. Building societies are mutual societies, are owned by their members for the benefit of members, that is of both savers and borrowers alike.
The first Building Societies were formed in One thousand seven hundred and seventy five and by the mid eighten's were appearing regularly in mortgage contracts. The term building society is invented in the einghteenth century, in the United Kingdom. In the UK, building societies compete with banks for most personal banking services, especially mortgage lending and deposit accounts. At the start of 2008, there were fifty nine building societies in the UK, with total assets to three hundred and sixty billion pounds. Every building society in the UK is a member of the Building Societies Association. The number of societies in the UK