"There are benefits to being dynamic, but being boring has its advantages"

With a real hands-on attitude and prudent focus on business, Nigel Quinton, chief executive of Mansfield Building Society, believes a bit of guts and hard graft has highlighted its success.

In the last three years, the society has grown, with its assets increasing from £198m to £286m.

As it now stands strong with £300m in assets, compared to £30m more thn 25 years ago, having been taken under the wing eight months ago by the golf lover who aims to putt for profit - on and off the golfing range.

Mr Quinton said: "Our whole focus has been about being prudent and cautious.

"Although many feel that the emphasis is about working in an organisation that is dynamic, being boring can have its advantages."

In inheriting a strong business, Mr Quinton vows to excel its progress.

He said: "Our success depends on strategic needs rather than profit needs. We want to maintain our assets, as we want to keep expenses relatively low.

"There is a commercial model which is capital strong, where you can grow at a less profitable rate. We can afford to do business at a lower level because we have this capital strength."

He said: "It is my job to make sure that we diversify into different parts of the financial market giving income streams which allows us to subsidise our activity we have already got.

"I believe the mortgage brokerage, the IFA type activity, can be built around for a good, franchised building society and contribute significantly."

With two advisers already in place in the mortgage brokerage, Mr Quinton had planned for eight advisers last year, but held fire due to the low volumes in the last year. Next year, he plans to get a full team of eight.

Also, the society is in the process of leading a joint venture with an IFA firm, and aims to launch this before the end of the year.

He said: "We hope that it will give us an income stream and a service to our members, which will help contribute to the overall pot and a steady growth of capital and to continue to offer attractive products.

"Our loan-to-value in new business is 75 per cent with the current pricing, and up to 80 per cent and 90 per cent. So we still have quite a lot of security in our business. We have more liquidity now than we ever had in our existence. We have plenty of fuel to do a fair amount of mortgage business."

With the credit crunch in full swing and a pending recession in the offing, Mr Quinton relies heavily on his background and knowledge to tackle these challenges head on.

The Chesterfield-born and bred music-fan, who had briefly delved in a local authority career and trained as an accountant at the same time, decided the mutuality of a building society seemed to be a good step forward and started at the Derbyshire Building Society as an accountant in 1988, before becoming chief accountant.