National Counties Building Society

"The scope of the functionality of the software is so great it can meet all of our current business needs and cope easily as we look to improve our internal operations and increase our efficiency."

National Counties Building Society provides mortgage and investment facilities to over 40,000 personal customers situated throughout the UK. It can trace its origins back to formation of the Fourth Post Office Mutual in 1896 and remains a mutual organisation to this day. By the end of 2001, the society had general reserves in excess of £92million and total assets over £703million - giving it the strongest capital ratio in the Building Society industry and providing investors with an unrivalled level of security.P>

High Transaction Volumes and Complete Traceability

With a turnover measured in £billions and over 160,000 transactions per year, the Society needed an accounting system that was capable of handling high volumes of data with ease. Security and traceability were equally important, as company procedures require the Manager of the Accounts Department to run audit trails two or three times per week. Dimensions meets all these demands. It gives the Society a snapshot of actual turnover (transactions posted to the system) and quickly generates detailed audit trails. Internal procedures also require executives with budgetary responsibilities to check the accuracy of individual reports and agree everything that is charged to the Nominal Ledger. Dimensions helps to streamline this process by providing detailed Trial Balance reports, showing turnover and budget side by side.

Meeting Strict FSA Reporting Requirements

Justin Bradley, Manager of the Accounts Department, explains one of the Society’s biggest challenges. "The FSA requires the society to provide balance sheet data at month end. Our Access system collates all the data, including that held on our customer account mainframe, and provides a consolidated balance sheet. This information is then used to generate the required FSA reports…and we are able to meet the tightest deadlines."

Potential for Further Savings

Justin summarises the benefits of the Dimensions system: "We have been using Access Accounts since 1998 and still haven’t explored everything it has to offer. The scope of the software is so great that it can meet all of our current business needs and play a central role in our drive to improve internal operations and increase efficiency."