Countrywide record

Press, 10 August 1982, Page 17

Countrywide record

The Countrywide Building Society has announced a record financial year ending June 30, with assets increasing from $164 million to $220 million, an increase of more than 33 per cent. Countrywide’s chairman (Mr D. M. Elliffe) said that the unaudited results confirmed that Countrywide had grown substantially faster than the building society movement in general. • In the previous year Countrywide increased its assets from $lOB million to $164 million but this included

results from the other societies with whom Countrywide merged during that year. Mr Elliffe emphasised that the $56 million growth in assets in the June, 1982 year had come solely from the operations of Countrywide. The announced figures do not include any results from the Western Building Society, with which Countrywide plans to merge later this year. Mr Elliffe said the merged societies would have aS's sets of about $275 million, and more than 200,000 accounts. During the year Countrywide lent money on mortgages and personal loans at the rate of more than a million dollar's a week. In all, 2259' mortgages totalling $5l million were granted, predominantly for residential home buyers, and a further $6.7 million was . granted in personal, loans against share security, much

of which was used in home renovation. Countrywide now has a total of s’l37 million invested in mortgages, as well as meeting its statutory requirement to invest a proportion of funds in Government and local body stocks. With the change in the Building Societies Act, which came into force on April 1 last year, the society’s growth has come mainly from the now most popular passbook accounts rather than from contractual savings under the terminating system. Because of the resultant need to maintain high liquidity it currently carries some $34 million in short term investments. Mr Elliffe said that Countrywide had given its terminating shareholders an undertaking that their rights would continue to be protected, even though the Society ceased accepting new terminating members in October, 1980.