"Mutual is best," insists Bradford's Yorkshire Building Society as yet another financial institution unveiled plans to float on the stock market.

The Rooley Lane-based building society said it had no plans to follow Standard Life and become a public limited company and would stay mutual.

More than a million Standard Life members are in line for windfalls of more than £1,000 as part of stock market flotation plans revealed by the insurer.

Around 2.4 million policyholders are eligible for shares from the demutualisation, which will earn between £500 and £1,000 for half of Standard's membership with the average windfall estimated at around £1,700.

But Andy Caton, corporate development director of Yorkshire Building Society, said it remained dedicated to retaining mutual status, keeping customers as the owners rather than shareholders.

"Yorkshire Building Society is totally committed to remaining mutual," he said. "We firmly believe that maximising long-term benefits for current and future members is achieved by remaining mutual."

He said the society remained committed to the idea of passing profits to customers in the form of better rates for savers and borrowers, rather than paying dividends to shareholders.

"Our purpose is to maximise long term benefits for a growing membership," he said. "We achieve this by continually providing high quality products and services and having high levels of communication with members, understanding the needs of customers and investing in people.

"We feel that these practical benefits are best achieved by maintaining our mutual status."

One company which followed the demutualisation path was Bradford & Bingley, which became a bank after floating on the Stock Exchange on December 4, 2000.

Katherine Conway, Bradford & Bingley's head of investor relations, said that, since then, the company had been able to "deliver benefits to shareholders through healthy dividends and an increase in share price".

"As part of the demutualisation 2.7 million qualifying members were allocated 250 shares.

"Since then we have retained around one million retail shareholders who have enjoyed regular dividends and an increase in share price from 247p at flotation to around 470p today.

"This clearly demonstrates that our shareholders are comfortable owning a stake in the company and enjoy benefiting from its growth and success."

Standard needs the support of 75 per cent of participants in a ballot for its flotation to go ahead. It would raise £1.1 billion from new investors and value the group at between £4.8 billion and £5.5 billion.

The insurer said becoming a listed company would allow it to raise capital to support and develop its business more easily.

e-mail: jonathan.walton@bradford.newsquest.co.uk