Our Society at a glance. Key facts and figures to show what we’re made of.

Key facts

Yorkshire Building Society aims to deliver real help and value to its customers by providing the financial tools and support to enable them to achieve the things in life that matter to them most. The Society has been helping people to secure a place to call home and gain greater financial wellbeing since 1854.
The Society has three main office locations in Bradford, Leeds, and Peterborough.
As of the end of 2023, Yorkshire Building Society had assets of £61.0 billion and 3 million customers across the YBS Group, including Chelsea Building Society and Norwich & Peterborough Building Society, which are trading names of Yorkshire Building Society. Its subsidiary companies include Accord Mortgages Limited.
Yorkshire Building Society is committed to building a sustainable future for its members, colleagues and communities and the UK. As a mutual organisation owned by its members and not shareholders, Yorkshire Building Society can reinvest profits to deliver its social purpose.
Yorkshire Building Society’s charity partnership with FareShare will run until June 2026 and aims to raise £1million to support the charity’s Building Skills for the Future programme. This will help support, equip and prepare 2,500 people to enter employment. The partnership will see the creation of employability programmes in seven of the charity’s regional centres: Edinburgh, London, Bristol, Milton Keynes, Leeds, Barnsley and Cardiff.
Yorkshire Building Society is working to improve the financial education and resilience in the next generation in the UK. The Society’s free financial education programme, Money Minds, is a series of lessons designed to promote discussion and learning amongst children, young people and adults.
Since 1999, the Yorkshire Building Society Charitable Foundation has donated more than £9m to charities and good causes across the UK. The Charitable Foundation is funded through the Small Change Big Difference® scheme where members donate the pennies from the interest on their accounts just once a year to support UK charities and good causes.

1864


Huddersfield Equitable Permanent Benefit Building Society is established by three gentlemen who meet each morning from 5am to 8am in a single room in Huddersfield. Early directors of the Society include a dentist, a shoemaker and a plumber.

At the end of the first year there were six borrowers and assets of £4,044 13s 5d.
 

1866


West Yorkshire Building Society is established at the Royal Hotel in Dewsbury with only two staff.
 

1871


Two 'luxury' items are purchased for the Society's offices - an umbrella and a rug.
 

1885


Bradford Self Help Permanent Building Society is established in St. George's Hall Coffee Tavern.

At the end of the first year there were 43 members and assets of £185,000.
 

1885-89


During its first four years of business the Bradford Permanent opens for just an hour and a half, once a week.
 

1893


By this date, the Society's office was fitted with the electric light.

1915


The first lady employees join the Society.
 

1923


The number of staff employed by the West Yorkshire Building Society has doubled to four.
 

1930


The modernised offices of the Bradford Permanent open at Queen Anne Chambers - complete with rubber covered floors and ultraviolet ray glass.
 

1975


The Huddersfield and Bradford Building Societies merge in the largest marriage of two societies to date.
 

1982


The Huddersfield & Bradford and West Yorkshire Building Societies merge - the Yorkshire Building Society is born!
 

1992


Yorkshire Building Society merges with the Haywards Heath Building Society.
 

1998


The Yorkshire Building Society Charitable Foundation established as an independent registered charity.
 

2001


Yorkshire Building Society is the third largest mutual in Britain with assets of over £11 billion.

2003


Yorkshire Building Society launched its intermediary-only lending subsidiary Accord Mortgages.
 

2008


Assets now in excess of £23 billion with 2 million members.

The Yorkshire merges with Barnsley Building Society (with 60,000 members and assets £368m) on 31 December.
 

2010


The Yorkshire merges with Chelsea Building Society on 1 April 2010. Our combined assets are now of over £30bn, 2.8m members and a network of 178 branches.
 

2011


The Yorkshire acquires Egg mortgage and savings book, and the Egg brand, on 31 October 2011.

The Yorkshire merges with the Norwich & Peterborough Building Society on 1 November 2011.
 

2012


At the end of the year, our assets had grown to approximately £33 billion with 3.5m members.
 

2014


Happy 150th Birthday YBS!
 

2014


My Voice, our member online research community went live - giving members the opportunity to feedback on a variety of topics that really matter.
 

2015


Colleagues and Marie Curie nurses brewed up a new Guinness World Records title in aid of Marie Curie, when a total of 667 Society colleagues took part in the largest cream tea party in multiple venues.
 

2016


Money Minds, our financial education programme for 5-19 year olds was launched. Delivered by colleagues, its designed to promote learning and discussion with young people.
 

2016


The Barnsley Building Society brand is retired and the Chelsea Building Society brand becomes online and telephone only. Most branches under these brands are rebranded to Yorkshire Building Society.
 

2017


The Norwich & Peterborough Building Society is retired, making Yorkshire Building Society our sole high street brand and delivering greater efficiency and improved value to our three million customers, including access to a larger national high street network in more than 240 towns and cities.
 

2017


Yorkshire Building Society Charitable Foundation said thanks a million to its members who have contributed their own money to the more than £4 million donated to help charities and good causes around the UK.
 

2018


We signed the Women in Finance Charter and made a commitment to improve gender diversity.
 

2019


Career Minds, a new volunteering programme was launched that enables our colleagues to use their skills to help 14-16 year olds prepare for the world of work.
 

2020


Our Savings App was launched.
 

Member benefits

Find out what it means to be a member, what sets us apart from the rest,
and why us having no external shareholders is such a good thing.

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