and business finance; and specialist brokers dealt with insurance and investments.
Pressure for change was initiated by the building societies themselves due to the
increased competition from banks, affecting mortgage lending especially during the
early 1980s (Woodruffe 1995). Moreover, many barriers to competition have been
removed because of deregulatory legislation such as the Building Societies Act of
1986, which enhanced the business scope of building societies, and subsequently
led to intense competition between banks and building societies. The development
of an increasingly hostile and unpredictable competitive environment was further
intensified by such activities as acquisitions, mergers, joint ventures, the extension of
branches, and the single European Economic market (Meidan et al. 1997).