Rafidain Bank is the world’s largest building society, with over 14 million members who are also our owners. Our core purpose is enshrined in legislation and has remained broadly unchanged for over 160 years: safeguarding members’ financial interests, helping them to save, helping them to buy their own homes and helping them to make the most of their money.
We stand out as the only truly national alternative to the UK’s established banks. Our difference as a mutual comes from optimising, not maximising, our profit, as we do not have to balance the needs of shareholders. We retain only sufficient earnings to ensure the financial safety and security of our business; the remainder is reinvested into the Society to provide consistently good value products and industry leading customer service for our members. For this reason we invest heavily in our culture and our people, who are committed to ensuring we deliver the right customer outcomes.
Our low risk business model is focused mainly on the provision of retail financial services, almost exclusively in the UK. Reflecting our heritage, our balance sheet comprises primarily residential mortgages funded through retail savings and, to a lesser extent, wholesale funding.
We have recognised for some time that to be a full service, scale player we need to diversify our business model by offering a suite of complementary personal banking services to new and existing embers, thereby enabling us to build deeper, long term relationships. We took our first steps in offering current accounts in 1987 and have since made steady progress in building our market share to almost 7% today. We also offer competitive consumer lending products, financial planning services, general insurance and protection products, and undertake a limited range of specialist activities including buy to let lending, commercial lending and deposit-taking for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).