The Building Societies Act 1986 is an Act of

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprem ...

governing

building societies A building society is a financial institution owned by its members as a mutual organization. Building societies offer banking and related financial services, especially savings and mortgage lending. Building societies exist in the United Kingdo ...

( mutually-owned

mortgage A mortgage loan or simply mortgage (), in civil law jurisdicions known also as a hypothec loan, is a loan used either by purchasers of real property to raise funds to buy real estate, or by existing property owners to raise funds for any ...

-lending institutions). It removed certain restrictions on the range of services they could offer, so that they could compete with banks on a level basis: they could now make unsecured loans, offer cheque accounts, exchange currencies, provide stockbroking services, manage

personal equity plan A personal equity plan (PEP) was a form of tax-privileged investment account in the United Kingdom, available between 1986 and 1999. History The plans were introduced by Nigel Lawson in the 1986 budget to encourage equity ownership among the wide ...

s (tax-privileged investment accounts) and portfolios of

unit trusts A unit trust is a form of collective investment constituted under a trust deed. A unit trust pools investors' money into a single fund, which is managed by a fund manager. Unit trusts offer access to a wide range of investments, and depending ...

, arrange and advise on insurance, etc. A new regulatory agency, the Building Societies Commission, was set up to supervise the activities of the societies, which were allowed to de-mutualise and become public limited companies subject to the agreement of their depositors. This Act and the

Big Bang The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the ...

stockmarket reform, also in the UK, also in 1986, were the two central planks of the move to financial

deregulation Deregulation is the process of removing or reducing state regulations, typically in the economic sphere. It is the repeal of governmental regulation of the economy. It became common in advanced industrial economies in the 1970s and 1980s, as a ...

in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. The

Financial Services Act 1986 The Financial Services Act 1986 (1986 c.60) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed by the government of Margaret Thatcher to regulate the financial services industry. The Act used a mixture of governmental regulation and sel ...

was also part of that movement.

References

United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1986 Banking in the United Kingdom 1986 in economics Building societies of the United Kingdom {{UK-statute-stub

See also

References