Swansea Building Society has been named as winner of the Medium to Large Business category at this year’s Swansea Bay Business Awards.
The award was presented to Swansea Building Society’s CEO, Alun Williams, at the prestigious annual awards ceremony held at the Brangwyn Hall in Swansea on the evening of Thursday, September 15, 2022.
The Swansea Bay Business Awards cover the Swansea Bay City Region, incorporating the local authority areas of Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, Carmarthenshire, and Pembrokeshire. They celebrate the achievements of the talented and successful individuals, companies and entrepreneurs that work across the region.
The awards feature 11 individual categories, with the addition of two awards given for overall Company of the Year and a Judges’ Choice Award for a firm that has demonstrated exceptional growth.
Founded in 1923, Swansea Building Society this year saw its total assets reach £500m. With a determined commitment to the high street, the building society continues to expand its staff numbers, premises, and availability to customers, while recently investing £1m in improving its IT infrastructure.
Ranked the most profitable mutual of its size in the sector, it remains one of the few financial institutions in the UK that receives no wholesale funding or support from the Bank of England in the form of cheap funding. Its balance sheet is funded entirely by customer savings balances and its own capital reserves built up from retained profits over many years.
The Medium to Large Business category is open to all companies in the Swansea Bay Region with 25 or more employees. Winning the award recognises Swansea Building Society’s innovative products, services and processes, as well as its expansion into new markets and different areas of business activity. It also recognises the work done by the Society to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on people, processes and profit, as well as rewarding the business’s long-term planning and investment, and its work in supporting the wider community.
Alun Williams, CEO of Swansea Building Society, said:
“Winning this award means a great deal to the whole team at Swansea Building Society and reflects the hard work everyone at the Society puts in. As a mutual, our aim is always to make the right decisions and investments for our members. It’s great, therefore, that this award highlights the work we have done over the past couple of years to help the communities we serve by keeping our branches open and making significant donations to charities and community groups throughout a very difficult time for them.
“As ever, we will continue to innovate our products and services, and expand our team and presence where we can, always with the goal of helping more people plan their finances and get the mortgages they need to build a secure future.”
