Greater Building Society has easily funded better-than-budgeted growth in home loans off a surging deposit book, and can thank the pricing tactics of major banks for its success on the asset side. On the other hand, its margins declined over the year as its balance sheet expanded quickly.The Newcastle-based building society yesterday published its annual report for the year to June 2011 (timed to coincide with its AGM), which shows net profit fell by one third to A$17.1 million for the year.With A$4.6 billion in assets, Greater Building Society is the fourth largest in the sector. From Thursday, when Heritage Building Society swaps over to bank status, Greater will be the third largest in the sector measured by assets.Deposit growth over the last year was 16 per cent (about 40 per cent faster than the average for all building societies). Home loan growth was 10 per cent, a little less than the industry's average (though still faster than overall growth in home loans in Australia).Don Magin, chief executive officer of Greater, said that "for the first time ever we saw a huge backlash against the CBA, following their decision to lift interest rates on Melbourne Cup Day in November 2010."We saw a huge influx of disgruntled customers, mostly from CBA. So we made a little bit of inroads in market share versus the major banks."Magin also said that uncertainty in offshore markets was generating "a lot of negative sentiment, impacting the propensity to borrow".Greater has researched the merits of changing its status to that of a mutual bank.Magin said that "in the Hunter area, building societies are very strong. There is great brand awareness."We did the Seinfeld [advertising campaign] a couple of years ago and that has set us up very nicely."The research we did suggested there's some negatives in becoming a bank. More customers are coming to us because they are disgruntled with the bank down the road and they don't want us to become a bank."