Nationwide boss slams regulators over Rock

"The tripartite authority system has been exposed by this because it does not show which of the authorities is responsible for what," said Graham Beale, chief executive of Nationwide.

"What is disappointing is that the run on the bank happened in the first place. There should have been some kind of safety valve in place which would have solved things before they became public."

Nationwide has become one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Northern Rock crisis, collecting many of the savers who withdrew their money from the bank.

Beale said: "We have had an exceptional performance in the retail savings market as savers seek a safe haven. We have one of the strongest and safest balance sheets of any financial organisation in the UK."

The building society saw a doubling of new deposits in its first half at £4.1 billion. But Beale revealed that £1.8 billion of that came in during September as the crisis broke. He added that October had seen even greater inflows and November was looking equally strong.

Unlike Northern Rock, Nationwide has little reliance on the wholesale money markets to fund its mortgage books with more than 70% of its funding coming from depositors. Indeed, Beale said that in the latest six months: "We did not need to use the money markets at all to fund our growth because the deposit growth was so strong."

The building society's strength was emphasised by the closure yesterday of the market between banks in normally highly rated covered bonds and the pulling by Spanish-owned Abbey of a covered bond issue.

Beale believes the crisis has not yet run its course, and that other mortgage lenders will follow the likes of Paragon in needing to refinance. He said: "There is bound to be further consolidation in the market, which will obviously benefit the strongest players."

However, he insisted that Nationwide, which took over the smaller Portman earlier this year, would not take on anything that weakened its balance sheet.

Even before the Northern Rock crisis, Nationwide had tightened its lending criteria. Net lending in the six months to September fell from £5.9 billion to £3.6 billion.

Beale said: "We are a very risk-averse organisation. There have been some lenders, not just Northern Rock, out there selling very aggressively. Some of the tactics in the market place were incredibly aggressive. We were having no part in that."

Mortgage brokers have said that alongside Northern Rock, Alliance & Leicester and Abbey have been chasing market share in recent months.

Nationwide's profits rose 29% to £394.4 million.