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CV: Mike Heenan was born in Liverpool and now lives in Stafford. After completing a degree at Leicester University in physics, Mr Heenan trained with Pricewaterhouse Coopers to become a chartered accountant in 1976. In 1981 he became a partner at accountants Dean Statham. He is now senior partner at the accountancy firm and chief executive of Stafford Railway Building Society.

MA: How did you move into your current role?

MH: I was educated in Stafford, then I went to university and did a physics degree but I had always really hankered to become an accountant, so I undertook training at Pricewaterhouse Coopers in Birmingham. In 1979 I came to work for a firm of chartered accountants called Dean Statham, as part of that is was led me to be asked to become joint secretary of the building society. I am still a practising accountant in that firm, in fact I am a senior partner now. The firm has been running the building society under this arrangement since about 1880 so it is rather a long time and it is an unusual arrangement now but it was not an unusual arrangement 30 to 40 years ago. A lot of building societies were run by local professionals, either solicitors or accountants, and they would run the local society on behalf of the board of directors. In modern parlance I am probably the only outsourced chief executive in the country.

MA: What would you say you have achieved since you have been at Stafford Railway Building Society?

MH: My main drive has been to keep things simple and not try and be clever or too complicated in the products we offer. But what we do offer we try to make the best we can. The aim is to keep things as simple as we can but also as competitive as possible, both on the savings front and on the mortgages front. I started to realise pretty early on things were starting to get very complicated with all sort of different products, deals and so on and it was difficult to distinguish between them. I felt somebody who could offer something in plain English that people could actually understand would have an attraction and that I suppose has been my main driving force. The other thing I think was inbuilt in the society when I took it on, but I have promoted it, is the concept o f treating everyone else as a member of the society.

MA: How do you as such a small society manage to survive in such difficult times?

MH: You have to be different. Trying to replicate what others do is the road to disaster, at the end of the day because of your size you will not have the financial strength or the wherewithal to necessarily do it. What you can do is be good at what you do and if you are good at what you do you can succeed. Another thing I am passionate about is keeping our overheads down. So we do use the latest methods in trying to deliver our services. We were the first building society to totally outsource our computer function. We were the first society to not actually have our main computer processing operation here, it is outsourced to a firm called NFML, which is basically run by Newcastle Building Society.

MA: Do you get a lot of business through intermediaries?

MH: Traditionally the answer to that is no but in the early part of this year we got quite a lot of business through intermediaries because obviously our products became very attractive. At the moment we will only take business within the local area because we know the product is so attractive it would be swamped. That is the one disadvantage of a small society; you have to be very careful not to get into a position where you can not fund the lending. We rely almost exclusively on retail so that is a constraint. It is a constraint on most smaller societies if they do not have wholesale funding. At the end of the day we have traditionally lent all over the country and about 40 per cent of our mortgage book is outside the county of Stafford. An interesting historical quirk is we have lent all over the country since we were founded because we were a railway society so we lent wherever the railway went.

MA What would you say your business plans are within the larger market?

MH: Our business plans for the future are to keep growing at a reasonable rate without over doing it, to continue to keep a very simple product range and to continue to offer services to members in the way I described. I have a feeling that after this credit crunch is over the public will not tolerate the complications they have had up until now and will want a transparent product they can understand.

MA: Do you have any plans to merge or do you plan to remain completely independent?

MH: Never is a word I would never use but while we can continue to offer a service at an economical rate both in terms of mortgages and respectable savings, I do not see a need for us to either merge or be taken over. Obviously financial markets change, fashions change and one can never totally predict the future, while we are able to continue in the way we are doing I do not see a need for us to team up. We are offering something quite different to the majority and as such, if we continue to be successful, why should we have to go in with anyone else?

MA: What do you still need to work on?

MH: I am not certain that we are known well enough. The only trouble is if we are too well known we will not be able to cope with the demand. It is a balancing act. Despite winning awards, I do not think we are as well known as we might be both in the introducer market and the general market. I think there is a bit of work to be done there in making people know we are an option. We will not be everyone's cup of tea, we will not fit with certain criteria and so on. The other thing is to keep very clearly focused on streamlining the operation. Just because we have always done something that way we do not have to keep it that way. For example using passbooks, will that carry on forever? A lot of people like the fact they have a passbook, with all their transactions recorded in it, but you do have to ask the question is it today's modern way? Would they rather have that on the internet? There are lots of possibilities that one has to look at for providing services in the modern world.

MA: What are you most proud of and what would you say was your biggest success?

MH: I am proud to be running this building society and I am proud we are able to win awards and things like that in what has been, up until the recent conditions, one of the toughest markets in the world. We have managed to hold our own. We do provide a good service locally and we support the local community.

MA: What would you say is the most important thing you have learnt?

MH: What you expect does not always happen. It is always changing. I have been through two difficult periods here. I was not involved in the society in the early 1980s but I was involved in business, and I saw the problems there and I have been through the 1990s. All these things came upon us and this current climate has come upon us, no-one predicted it. I suppose what I have learnt is to be prepared for the unexpected.

MA: What is the biggest challenge you have ever faced?

MH: I hate having to tell people we no longer require them. Not necessarily in the building society context and in terms of redundancy but perhaps they are not performing and so on. It is a hard job and it is the hardest in my view if you are a really caring employer. Either because they are not up to scratch or perhaps the job they are doing is no longer required. I have had to do both in different jobs and I always find it the hardest thing of all but if you are at a senior level you have to accept that and you have to do it. I was aware that one particular financial institution made its employees redundant by email and I really cannot understand that. I am afraid you do have to face people.