However, one building society has recently been honoured with a national award, which was awarded to the building society in November.

The award was made earlier this month at the Mortgage Finance Gazette awards ceremony in London.

The award that was made to the building was the Best Regional Building Society award, and at a time when many banks and building societies are facing fierce criticism the award has been welcomed by the Carlisle based building society.

The Cumberland was found to have offered the most consistently competitive mortgage rates over the course of the year.

The Cumberland also went on to win another award at the ceremony, and scooped the Community Services award, which goes to small and medium sized lenders.

A spokesperson from the building society said that the Cumberland was very proud to have received the prestigious awards and added that the lender would continue to try and provide competitive rates on mortgages.

He also said that the building society is a traditional one, and that it aims to put the interests of its customers at heard.

He said: “We are delighted to be named the UK’s Best Regional Building Society. We aim to provide consistently competitive mortgages and it is great to see this recognised at a national level. Being a traditional building society we have put the interests of our members first ever since we were established, and we continue to do so now. Although this has been called boring and old fashioned in the past, our traditional approach to lending has allowed us to build on our financial strength and keep providing good value mortgage and savings products throughout the current economic difficulties.”

Cumberland Building Society gets national award is a post from: Glitec Loans

However, whilst the larger banks were experiencing problems with their funding, many thought that the UK’s building societies had escaped the major effects of the credit crunch. One of the main reasons for this train of thought was that building societies mostly fund their mortgages and lending from savers’ deposits. However, a series of recent reports from smaller building societies suggested that they had in fact become victims of the credit crunch, with many stating that they have had to withdraw various products, restrict lending, and take on less business.

A spokesperson from one building society recently stated: ‘Any potential borrower who currently has a mortgage offer from us should rest assured. Those deals will be honoured. We will try to help existing borrowers coming off discounted rate deals where we can, but the reality is that borrowing is more expensive.’

Another building society official said: “We were getting a lot of calls from around the country and we wanted to make sure that people locally can get them. Lenders are withdrawing rates and increasing them and limiting the percentage they will lend on. We are a bit loathe to do that and it is to make sure we don’t have to that we are restricting borrowing to people in our area.”

In a similar vein, another official from a small building society said: “Wholesale money is difficult to get and we have come to a standstill at the moment. We are hoping it will just be for a month, but we have taken on so much we have just run out of money to lend at the moment.”

However, despite the concerns from building societies, and the obvious fact that many have started to take their various deals off the market and cut back on their lending levels, officials from the Building Societies Association have claimed that the picture is not that bleak for building societies, and that they are by and large in good shape.

An official from the BSA stated: “I don’t think they’re struggling, in fact very much the opposite. Building societies aren’t the only organisations out there that are cutting back on lending, competitors are as well. Just because they’re restricting lending doesn’t mean that they’re struggling.”

The conflicting reports from the BSA and officials from building society branches may be causing some confusion for many consumers, but most are aware that lending across the board has become tighter, and that this could mean increased difficulties in getting finance from both banks and building societies.

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How Is The Credit Crunch Affecting Building Societies? is a post from: Glitec Loans