There is no large private office, imposing desk or thick pile carpet for Iain Cornish, youthful-looking boss of Bradford-based Yorkshire Building Society.

Instead, he operates in a relaxed, shirt-sleeved manner in an open-plan area which is easily accessible to staff. It’s a style he has nurtured among his senior colleagues since taking the top job in 2003. It helped him engender a more inclusive environment to replace the traditional, starchy working conditions that used to dominate such venerable financial institutions.

The quietly-spoken 48-year-old is about to lead the Yorkshire into a deal with the Chelsea Building Society to form an enlarged Bradford-based society with assets of £35 billion, 2.7 million members and a national network of 178 branches.

Subject to Chelsea members endorsing the merger on January 22, and Yorkshire members following suit at a special meeting on January 26, Bradford will become the hub of a strong second force in the UK building society sector, with Iain at the helm.

The Yorkshire members’ meeting will be at Bradford’s Cedar Court hotel at 2.30pm, and Iain wants as many as possible to attend. Those who are borrowers and savers will have two votes on the proposed merger deal.

If they back it, and the Financial Services Authority nods it through, the enlarged Yorkshire Building Society will come into being in April – then the hard work of integrating the two organisations will start in earnest.

Iain is keen to emphasise that it’s not a shotgun marriage in the style of Lloyds-HBOS, insisting that the Chelsea could have carried on as an independent society despite suffering post-tax losses in 2008 and early 2009.

The move is expected to generate cost-savings of around £40m over the next 18 months and will provide the Yorkshire with a stronger customer base in London and the South-East.

The merger will also strengthen Iain’s position as a cheerleader for mutual financial institutions. Once regarded as dinosaurs by some, they are back in fashion following the banking debacle which did for the likes of Bradford & Bingley.

As Iain points out, all the institutions that forsook their mutual status to become banks have now bitten the dust as independent businesses.

An economics and statistics graduate from Southampton University, Iain began his career working for the Government and then the accountancy giant KPMG in London. He moved north in 1989 to join the Bradford & Bingley Building Society in a business planning role before joining the Yorkshire in 1992, working in several senior jobs before becoming chief executive.

That move determined his private life, as he met his wife Josette, who worked in the insurance department at the Yorkshire. They live in Ilkley with their two daughters, aged nine and six.

He had played a key role, not only in the development of YBS – which last year stepped in to rescue the struggling Barnsley Building Society in the height of the credit crunch – but also in the wider industry. He became its national figurehead, serving two years as chairman of the Building Societies Association.

More recently, Iain was appointed chairman of the Financial Services Practitioner Panel of the industry regulator, the Financial Services Authority, to represent the views of financial service firms.

Iain said: “The FSA is currently under more pressure than ever. Everyone has an interest in the effective and proportionate regulation of financial services.

“I want to ensure that the Practitioner Panel helps the FSA to get the balance right, and that it provides a constructive industry voice on issues which are at the heart of FSA policy-making.”

He remains bullish about the future of building societies and prospects for YBS. The Chelsea deal will be the biggest structural change since the current organisation was formed in 1982, when the Huddersfield & Bradford and West Yorkshire Building Societies merged.

Iain said: “The Chelsea will be a perfect fit for us. There is very little overlap in our branch networks, and the merger will provide us with economies of scale and cost-savings. We can use these to provide members with even better services and rates.

“We’re being as prudent over this merger as we are with our approach to business generally, and have taken a long, hard look at the Chelsea over a four-month period. If approved, it will take about 18 months to amalgamate both organisations. We believe the outcome will benefit our members and put the Yorkshire in a better position.”

The deal involves no executive bonuses for Iain or his colleagues, nor any windfalls for Yorkshire or Chelsea members.

Iain is delighted that building societies are back in favour, following the ‘carpetbagging’ era of the 1990s which saw most of the large societies – including Bradford & Bingley – become banks in return for giving shares to members.

He said: “As mutual organisations, building societies do not have external shareholders or need to please the stock market. Our members’ interest is our sole concern, and in the wake of the bankers’ follies we’ve seen more people appreciating that and turning to us. Mutuals will continue to have an essential role to play in the UK financial services marketplace.”

Fact File

* Born in London, Iain Cornish is an economist and statistician by training.

l He graduated from Southampton University and worked as a civil servant before joining accountancy firm KPMG inLondon.

* He moved north to join Bradford & Bingley Building Society as a business analyst in 1989.

* He joined the Yorkshire Building Society in 1992 and was appointed chief executive in July, 2003.

* Iain is a member of the nominations and group risk committees and a trustee of the society’s pension scheme. He is also a director of the society’s subsidiaries Accord Mortgages Ltd and Yorkshire Key Services Ltd.

* His leisure time focuses around his family of wife Josette and two daughters, aged nine and six.

* Hobbies include running and researching the First World War, in which an uncle of his died at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.