Published: 28 February 2025
We’ve published our latest set of financial results.
As we head into our 150th year, our performance shows we remain focused on our roots - providing a safe place for savers’ money, and helping people buy a place to call home. We continue to be committed to our members' needs, investing in our branch network and digital experience.
Our 2024 highlights:
• 37,200 homes bought with us, including 17,600 first time buyers.
• Membership growing to a record high of 991,000.
• Generating the equivalent of £175m in extra interest for our savers, with an average savings rate that was above the rest of market average 1.
• Underlying profit of £187.5 before tax, allowing us to invest in our branches and digital service.
Discover what these numbers mean for you below, or read the full announcement here.
Helping people own a home
We know the value of having somewhere to belong, a place to call your own, it’s the reason we were founded a century and a half ago. We saw record lending in 2024, and in total we helped 37,200 people buy a home – including 17,600 first time buyers.
But hopeful home buyers continue to face difficult barriers to get on the ladder, to help them out, we launched Income Plus and Reach mortgages*. And we continue to responsibly provide high Loan to Value mortgages, as well as an award-winning Shared Ownership range.**
*Available via mortgage brokers
**What Mortgage’s Best Shared Ownership Mortgage Lender (2015-current)
Delivering for savers
Our savings members are key to our purpose. They help us make home ownership a reality for more people. And when more people have a home to call their own, we believe communities can become stronger, and a better place to belong.
That’s why we make sure to provide value for their savings. In 2024, we paid 0.79%1 above the rest of the market average, meaning we generated £175 million in extra interest for savers - a Society record.
119,100 new savings members joined us during the year through our branches, over the phone, and online.
Improving our service
Because we’re a mutual, we don’t have shareholders. Instead, we’re run on behalf of you, our members, and our strong financial performance allows us to invest significantly in our business.
We’ve started to transform our digital infrastructure, which will help colleagues and members in various different ways. The improvements won’t happen instantly, but we’re committed to ensuring we’re ready for the future.
We know many of you also love using our branches, and we also know they’re important to communities. At a time where many banks and building societies are closing theirs, we’re doing the opposite. 2024 saw us relocate well-loved branches in Gloucester and Stevenage, and we opened a brand-new branch (our 51st), in Solihull.
And our service continues to be highly rated, with satisfaction scores staying at 94%. 2
Strengthening communities
We love giving back to communities and good causes - it matters a lot to our colleagues, and our members. In 2024, we donated over £1 million to 240 organisations through grants and fundraising.
We launched a new charity partnership with Barnardo’s back in April, and we’ve already raised over £130,000. This money will build brighter tomorrows for care-experienced young people who are at risk of being homeless, supporting a cause that helps people have a safe and secure home.
For those who are in care and are beginning to think about moving into tenancies, we’re also working with Become, the national charity for care-experienced children and young people.
And our amazing colleagues volunteered more than 6,400 volunteering hours to good causes such as the Yorkshire Dales Millenium Trust and the Canal & River Trust.
And finally - a word from your CEO, Richard
Our CEO Richard Fearon had this to say about our performance during the year.
“Our achievements in 2024 year show the Society at its best, reflecting the talents of our colleagues and the collaborative culture they foster. We’re well-positioned to deal with any challenges that lay ahead and it’s clear that our nearly one million members continue to recognise our value. We’ll continue to invest in supporting our members and deliver our purpose which will remain unchanged, as it has for 150 years, because everyone deserves to have a place to call home.”
1 We paid 0.79% above the rest of the market average, meaning we generated £175 million in extra interest for our savers. CACI Current Account and Savings Database, Stock, including fixed and variable rates, January 2024 to December 2024. CACI is an independent company that provides financial benchmarking data of the retail cash savings market.
2 Overall customer satisfaction in a survey of 3,463 members from January to December 2024
