Savings

It’s been a great first 6 months

• A great savings performance with net flows recently exceeding £2bn - the agency network has contributed over £240m of this.
• Average growth of 3.6%, with 95% of agencies showing positive growth.
• £730m has matured in agency fixed rate accounts so far this year and the retention rate of 90% is excellent and compares favourably with other channels including branches.
• On the back of the June Bank of England rate increase we immediately announced that we’d be passing this on.
• 99% of our customers will see an increase in their rate on the 7 July. The minimum rate on our variable back-book savings products will now be 1.10% for unrestricted access and 1.15% for restricted access products. The minimum rate now offered on our on-sale range will be 1%. 
• This strong range compares brilliantly to the market (on sale and back book). It should really help conversations with customers who have funds elsewhere sat on lower rates, with providers who aren’t passing on increases to the extent we as a mutual are keen to do.  

New products

• We’ve re-launched our fixed rate range last week for bonds and ISAs, including the new Loyalty 18 month fixed rate bond which is available across all channels.
• The Smarter Tiering Family Finance Saver will launch 7 July and the Loyalty Regular Saver 19 July – another headline grabbing rate for existing members.

An award winning Society 

In case you missed it, we scooped up 4 awards at the Moneyfacts awards recently, including for savings: Personal Finance Provider of the Year, Best Building Society Savings Provider, Best No Notice Account Provider.

We were also highly commended in 3 further categories plus we won Best Building Society Mortgage Provider….

Mortgages

The ability to help our customers quickly is really coming into its own

The news is full of rates increasing and that borrowers need to act fast to secure mortgages and re-mortgages. Acting fast is what they can do by using the immediate handover process. This month’s blog about mortgage referrals helps bring this to life. You may also have seen Sarah’s video on the LinkedIn page.

And just to show how speedy we are, here are the latest weekly figures, so you know you’re not going to be waiting around:

Horsham, Rottingdean, Louth, Giffnock and Wallasey have all benefitted from a mortgage referral payment in 2022. And there’s plenty of opportunities for more to benefit as you can see from the total data which includes branches (who follow the exact same process). There’s lots of hints and tips in the blog to help you lead this out with your teams.

Community

Small Change, Big Difference, Big Difference:

• It is great to see that the retail opt-in rate for SCBD has increased by four percentage points since last month and is now 50.2%. However there is a gap developing between branches (achieving 55.7%) and agencies (achieving 40.1%). Agency donation requests are treated equally, so if you request funds you have as much chance as branches of securing them. Please remind your teams of this both to sharpen the focus on encouraging contributions, but also to look for opportunities to submit request for funds.
• The community team recently published a great spotlight on Yorkshire Building Society Charitable Foundation, which also includes an interview with the charitable foundation's trustees - one worth watching.  

Age UK: 

• Thank you for all your fundraising; this year alone, YBS has raised £257,444, bringing our partnership total up to £757,699 - these numbers include the matched giving by YBS. The retail network has raised a massive £143,059. Through our partnership, Age UK has supported 2392, and Age Scotland has supported 189 people.

Can you help me raise money for Age UK?

I’ve been busy fund raising too and completed a 20 mile walk with colleagues across the business last week. Check out my JustGiving Page if you’d like to make a donation – thank you!

NETWORK

NPS continues to be an area in which the network excels

We have ambitious targets again this year and the service your teams continue to provide can influence this.

Please ask your RAM to share your latest results and comments in your monthly meetings. 

Our new Linkedin Networking Page 

It’s a great opportunity to enhance our relationship together and build on the existing channels we already use.

As a reminder ……it’s a private group open to invited members only. A space to share best practice and take a steer from you on what you want or need from us. You’ll find introductions to some of the RAM team, and we’ll use it for timely updates outside of this monthly digest. Any feedback on what you would like to see featured just let us know..

Please join the page via your LinkedIn Profile - to keep up to date and to help support our own mutual commercial growth aspirations. As always anything specifically relating to your location, please always reach out to your RAM.

Digital training for agency colleagues

Scott Hartley, Digital Lead in our Learning & Development team explains what we’ve delivered for YBS colleagues that your teams will soon be able to benefit from:

“We’ve been working with colleagues and leaders across Branch Retail and Customer Services to develop a digital upskilling programme aimed at providing their customer facing colleagues with the skills and confidence needed to engage with new and existing members about our digital options at YBS. The programme focuses on developing: 

• Digital skills for Life – understanding how digital products and services work (including our own) so that colleagues are able and confident to talk about them.
• Digital Promotions Skills -   developing our communications skills so that colleagues are able to introduce a conversation about digital and apply their Skills for Life confidently when handling questions or member objections. 

Finally, we’ve developed and piloted a Digital Skills for Work programme in partnership with Microsoft. This programme focuses on developing the basic skills needed to create, communicate, and collaborate in the workplace. Our aim is to combine Skills for Work and Skills for Life into one Essential Digital Skills programme for all colleagues which will become available from Q3 this year”

Look out for more details from your RAM soon.

Work on branch/agency alignment continues

• We’re looking at both the faster payment and cash limits in agencies to see if we can make some changes. There are lots of factors to consider so we’ll keep you posted on progress.
• We’ve also identified some screens in YBS Live that your teams can’t access but branch colleagues can, so are planning to rectify this too.

Rhyl branch was the latest to be converted into an agency on 24 June - Debby Johnson of Dee Mortgages is now operating 4 agencies in the North West of England & North Wales.