in particular it did not involve any borrowing by the building society which promoted it. It had to be totally self-funding at every stage of its life cycle. In its original format ballots were only held when there was sufficient money in the kitty to provide an interest free mortgage to the winner. If there weren't enough funds there was no ballot and this ability to turn off the balloting tap made the product very resilient. The groups were able to survive prolonged economic depressions by simply not holding any ballots until things got better. Whilst working-class families aspired to own their own home, they didn't have access to the banking system, and they could not realistically expect to save enough in their working life to buy one. Accordingly, they were willing to enter terminating deposit schemes which did not guarantee them a house in exchange for their savings but were a mechanism by which some members of the scheme would get one, through the chance element of the ballot. Demise In Britain terminating deposit schemes were outlawed by statute between 1900 and 1910. The reason appears to have been that they relied heavily on the integrity of the organisers and, if this was not present, they were open to many abuses which left depositors out of pocket or dissatisfied. Similar legislation was passed over the following decades throughout the commonwealth with the last appearing to be in New Zealand in 1980/81. After this date no new schemes could be launched but due to the long life of the product some pre-1980 groups continued to exist to beyond 2000. By this stage the product and its administration was a far cry from the original concept. The factors contributing to this were: the implosion of the building society movement which saw it change through a rapid process of mergers and takeovers from an independent society in most large towns to a few large national societies between 1970 & 1990. the conversion of the biggest of these national societies to banks in the 1980s and 90s strong competition between societies from the 1960s on which saw rival societies make drastic changes to the product to make their version more attractive than their rivals. These innovations included the introductions of guaranteed monthly ballots, balloting at an earlier stage in the life of the group (less than 10 years) and a guaranteed interest-free mortgage