A focus on savings and mortgages this month, with both of our key areas performing well. There's also details on some tweaks to the Training and Competency scheme.

Savings

• Novembers massive milestone – we’ve exceeded £5bn of net flow for 2022. Something for us all to celebrate and your agencies have contributed an excellent £750m of this.
• On 3 November the Bank of England announced a further base rate rise, increasing the rate from 2.25% to 3.00%. We continue to pass this on to our members by increasing the rates in line with our Savings Rebooted priority.
• On 9 December our minimum rate on our variable back book savings products will be 2.30% for unrestricted products and 2.50% for restricted products. The minimum rate on our on-sale variable rate savings products will also be 2.30%.
• There’s no requirement for us to contact our savings customers about a savings rate increase, but we’re already sharing the good news on social media and online, with email and direct mail communications also planned (w/c 12 December and w/c 19 December).

Action:

• The savings interest rate increase is great news for your customers and the sixth time we’ve increased rates this year - so please make sure you and your teams share this with your customers too.

 Smarter tiering project – we’re nearly there

All products will have been migrated by 4 December – that’s approximately 1.4 million customers that will have been moved onto their new flexible interest version. At the same time, we’ll apply a rate increase of 0.10% to the first tier (£20k) of the variable rate back-book accounts that are migrated onto these products.

To put this into perspective, about 84% of customers have £20k or less in their accounts, meaning they’ll receive this 0.10% increase on their full balance. All balances above this tier will continue to get the same great existing rate. We’re also rationalising our variable rate off-sale book from around 200 products to 110 products (excluding holding/net accounts) to make things simpler for the business and the customer.

This has been a huge project across multiple teams across the Society to get us to this place which is great news for your teams and of course your customers.

Energy Savings Awareness Bond

• Due to be launched in mid-December, this is our first savings product supporting our Sustainability Strategy and overarching climate agenda.
• Designed for customers within our usual 1-year fixed target market who also have an interest in learning more about energy saving.
• A further 1-year fixed rate bond will be launched at the same time, at the same price, minus the energy savings wrapper to test the level of interest around energy awareness.
• In partnership with the Energy Savings Trust, we’ll provide customers with independent sources of information and support on energy efficiency and environmental issues which customers will have access to as part of the proposition.
• All the content is free and accessible to all YBS and non YBS customers, however as part of the Energy Savings Awareness Bond we’ll be proactively contacting customers by email three times during the duration of the bond making them aware of the tools and content available through the Energy Saving Trust. 
• The customer insight we do have tells us that a lot of our existing customers are interested in propositions linked to climate if this doesn’t impact the price of return on their savings. This approach will allow us to gather further insight around customer appetite, the usage of EST content (articles, tools) whilst also opening feedback up from customers as we look to shape YBS’s propositional response towards the Society’s overarching climate agenda looking to provide Real Help with Real Life.

Mortgages

2022 has been a record-breaking year for mortgage applications – with Accord and direct contributing to this. Agencies have and can play a big part in this, so a reminder …..

• Mortgage workshops are being held to support branch and agency colleagues increase knowledge and skill around mortgages - speak to your RAM for details for your area.
• Ensure your teams are aware that we have some market leading mortgage rates and encourage them to continue identifying opportunities to help our customers with their mortgage needs.
• Agencies are still using the call-back option more often than not – please remember the handover line (the most popular option in branches) where Direct Mortgage Team are still answering calls in less than a minute, so this service really complements the rates on offer.
• Finally remember each area has a buddy in the DMT for further support – speak to your RAM for more info.

Retail Updates

Training and Competency (T&C) Scheme - update

Following the introduction of Worksmart to Agencies, some tweaks have been made to the following documents:

• Agency T&C Scheme
• Agency T&C Scheme – Observation Guidance

The updated versions (both V3.0) can be found in the Agency Operations Manual on SharePoint and on the Intranet.

In summary, the changes made to the Agency T&C Scheme are:

• Further clarity has been added to the ‘Role of the Proprietor’ section and throughout the Scheme. This helps to understand who is responsible for each part of the Scheme.
• Vulnerable Customers has been added as a knowledge area in Section 3. Employees should demonstrate how to recognise and support Vulnerable Customers as part of ‘Attaining Competence’.
• The timescales associated with Induction and Training (Section 3.1) and Savings Meetings (Section 3.2) have been extended to a reasonable timescale for completion.
• References to Worksmart have been included in Section 5 – Record Keeping. Records must be stored on Worksmart moving forward. Please remember to retain all historical manual records.
• Minor wording tweaks throughout.

The changes made to the Agency T&C Scheme – Observation Guidance reflect the introduction of Worksmart and some minor wording tweaks throughout.

If you have any questions in relation to the changes, please speak with your Retail Area Manager.

Monitors

Good news – we are looking into refreshing the monitors in your agency in the new year, please watch this space!

Thank you

Dave