Family Finance Building Society (FFBS) has announced, several times,  their intent to follow in the footsteps of Equity Building Society, (EBS) and become a Bank. Family Finance ended the year with assets of 2.45 billion (up from 2.2 billion) which is bigger than some small banks. It has 2 billion in deposits (compared to Equity’s 5 billion), of which it has placed 800m in other banks, and advanced 1.1 billion as loans to customers.

But, they had a very poor 2004, with net interest income of 55 million (down from 174), fee income of 87 million (compared to 287 m in 2003) and total operating income of 143 million (down from 479m in 2003).

The Bank dealt with this reduced income by reducing staff costs to 42 million (from 103m), leases 17 million (from 94m) and other expenses 19m (down from 10m) resulting in an overall reduction of total operating expenses of 94 million (down from 388 million) – thus they ended the year with a profit of 49 million which was down from 91 million in 2003.