Thomas had been appointed Secretary of the Leigh Mills Company[4] in 1876 at the age of 22, a post he held for 20 years.

Among the other interests he developed were as a shipping agent, auctioneer and insurance broker, and he later formed a stockbroking partnership.

The terminating nature of the Starr-Bowkett showed the need for a permanent entity and that was the genesis of the Coventry Economic.

[5] When Thomas resigned from Leigh Mills in 1876 he established Daffern & Co[6] to consolidate what was now a wide range of entrepreneurial activities.

At the end of its first year the society had 128 members, rising to a peak of 481 in 1892, and staying at that level until the turn of the century.

Control passed to his son Thomas junior, who had been made joint secretary in 1924 with William Heatley, a long-standing assistant to the founder since 1897.

[5] In the early post-war years, the management had continued to strengthen the agency network; the Oxford branch had been a success but not Solihull, which had been leased to estate agents who acted for the society.

In 1953 the chairman stressed the need to open branches as the society had been trying to lend nationally but with investment drawn locally.

From 1960 the Coventry Economic (which had just shortened its name) expanded via branches from Sheffield to Milton Keynes.

Organic growth, helped by substantial monetary inflation, took the society's assets to over £18 billion at the end of 2009.

In 2010 the Coventry acquired the Stroud & Swindon Building Society, then the tenth largest, operating through a branch network of 22 offices and 22 agencies.