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Our values
Our values, which are shown below, help to build a culture of fairness in all our dealings with customers, our staff and the wider community. We aim to live by these values in everything we do, ensuring that we give you the best experience we possibly can:

• we are passionate about success
• we act with integrity and respect
• we strive to deliver quality and excellence
• we value people as individuals

Treating you fairly
We believe in providing good value, transparent products and a professional, efficient service. We also believe in treating all our customers fairly and we make sure we do this by:

• having well trained, competent and professional staff
• encouraging all our staff to embrace our core values in their behaviour
• providing products and services that meet the needs of our customers
• keeping our customers properly informed before, during and after they take a financial product with Chelsea
• complying fully with the letter and spirit of all relevant legislation and codes of practice
• insisting that all our advertisements and promotions are clear, fair and not misleading
• if things go wrong, handling complaints fairly, promptly and impartially
• monitoring how we're doing through comprehensive measures and controls

Our history
The origins of Chelsea Building Society go back to 1875, when the Camberwell and South London Building Society was formed. Three years later, in 1878, the Borough of Chelsea Permanent Building Society was formed. Over the years both societies merged with smaller societies and on 31 December 1966 the two societies merged to create a new society with assets of £30 million. The new society was called the Chelsea and South London Building Society until April 1971 when the name was changed to Chelsea Building Society.

Following the merger in 1966, the administrative headquarters were based in Streatham, with the registered office at 110 Kings Road, Chelsea. In 1973, having outgrown the accommodation at Streatham, the administrative headquarters moved to Thirlestaine Hall in Cheltenham. On 1 July 1988 Chelsea completed its most recent merger, with the City of London Building Society, with the name Chelsea remaining unaffected.

Our present
Chelsea now has assets in excess of £13 billion making us the country's 5th largest building society. We have 34 branch offices mainly in southern England, although our direct savings and mortgage facilities mean that we can truly be regarded as a national building society.

In April 2006 we opened our new Contact Centre in Cheltenham, demonstrating our commitment to offering our customers telephone support from within the UK. This purpose-built centre is designed to be environmentally friendly, just one reflection of our strong corporate responsibility pedigree. You can find more information on this whole subject on our special corporate responsibility website - www.chelseacares.co.uk.

Our growth over recent years has been founded on providing good value products, backed up by a high quality personal service. This has enabled us to fulfil our mission of helping people own their home and achieve financial security. We are very proud of the fact that the majority of our lending is supported by money saved by our members.

We are constantly striving to improve the services we offer and welcome all your suggestions for future developments.

Financial Position
In today's environment, it's hard to be anything but cautious when the uncertainty surrounding the financial markets is likely to continue for some time. With the current high level of media awareness, focus is on where people decide to place their savings.

With this in mind, Chelsea has been and remains a safe place for your money, for over 130 years'. With our traditional focus on the retail saver and significantly less dependence on the wholesale money markets for funds, we are better positioned than banks to deal with the difficult market conditions currently being experienced. Chelsea has been successful during the last 12 months in raising funds in both the retail and wholesale markets.

We have a strong business model, a good reputation, and robust levels of capital and liquidity. We have well established savings operations to enable us to raise more funds from savers. We have a prudent mortgage lending policy and good quality mortgage assets, and the level of payment arrears on our mortgages is much less than the average for the industry. We are also an efficient business with relatively low costs. Find out more specific information regarding our financial position.

Our Treasury Department oversees the wholesale funding we do, as well as investing our liquid funds. Find our more information regarding our Treasury Department.

Mutuality
All building societies are mutual institutions. Therefore people who have a savings account, or mortgage, are members and have certain rights to vote and receive information, as well as to attend and speak at meetings. This means we are solely focussed on delivering the best services and products for our members. This is in contrast to banks, who have a split loyalty between making a profit to deliver dividends to shareholders and delivering value for their customers.

We do not pay dividends to shareholders, this means that, overall, we as a building society can offer lower mortgage rates and higher savings rates than PLC's.

We are much closer to our customer needs as a result of our ownership structure. Our staff know that when they serve a customer they are serving one of the owners of our business. This ensures a completely different culture compared to institutions owned by shareholders.