Good morning all,

Happy new year! I hope you’re all well and had a great Christmas. Welcome to my new monthly digest! I’ll be sending this out every month with all the usual important updates and news, and some new content too, which I hope you’ll find useful. The format’s a bit different to what you’ve seen before, but hopefully this makes it clearer and easier to find what you need. Let me know (by replying to this email), if you have any comments on this new style.

First, a few words from Mike on our focus for 2020:

"I'm expecting 2020 to be another challenging year from a trading and competition perspective, but the markets seem to have responded somewhat positively to the fact that we now have a government with a large working majority……  I firmly believe that YBS is really well placed at the moment to continue to flourish….. we're going to keep focusing on our five to thrive to help more people into a place they can call home and do our bit to improve the nation's financial sustainability”

Here's to a great 2020!

Savings

This month, a review of 2019 and plans for 2020.

• The aim was to grow balances to 30.8bn, which we achieved – thank for your contribution.
• This was achieved despite us having to make some one-sided rate changes, so the growth has also been a profitable exercise – helped further by the significant changes we made to the product lines (covered in my messages last year).
• Agencies opened 41,000 new accounts compared to 37,000 in 2018.

Savings plans for 2020:

• The savings market is expected to grow by 3.4% in 2020.
• YBS aims to grow at a similar rate to the market.
• This means an increase of 16% is required in order to deliver the uplift in new money needed for 2020 – a challenge, but one we are really focused on achieving.

How? Your DM will be discussing this with you in more detail this year, but in summary we are looking to focus on:

• General retention – more focus on reducing account closures
• Widening conversations to look for new money from elsewhere (75% of the savings market is held with the big 6 banks, usually paying rates significantly lower than what YBS offers)
• Fixed rate retention
• Being more efficient – what do our customer follow ups look like and how do we make YBS as efficient as possible?

More detail on these tactics, the role we’d like you to play, and how we are doing will be provided in future updates and your DM visits.

Mortgages

I spoke to Tina Hughes about her plans for direct mortgages in 2020, and she said that we’ll continue to drive our direct business through the agency and branch network.

Her simple ask is that “we take the opportunity to talk to all appropriate customers about the award winning range of products that we offer”.

More about mortgage plans

We've had a very good start to the year from an external recognition perspective. MoneyNet has just confirmed YBS as their Best Overall Mortgage Provider (which they call the "Best of the Best"!), their Best Building Society Savings Provider, and also their best Provider for both First Time Buyers and Offset Mortgages. That's a pretty amazing start to 2020, right?

Tina also confirmed we will continue to look for more niche areas of customer business via the ‘raspberry ripple’ . This generates better returns, but also provides ‘real help with real lives’ rather than fight for ‘vanilla’ 2 year low LTV business (you may recall this from last year’s proprietor event).

In 2019 there were over 240 agency referrals, leading to 42 new mortgage applications. The support provided to referral agencies by branch MA’s will be more coordinated and focused this year (your DM will tell you more), and we held a successful workshop for agency colleagues in London earlier this month. This was in direct response to your feedback that you wanted more support. I will be in touch about future events in other locations, and I urge you to send representation to take advantage of this.

For those of you who submit direct mortgage business, don’t forget the dedicated team who can support you with both pre and post submission queries. Their email address is direct_lending_admin@ybs.co.uk and they can be contacted by telephone on 0345 1669 227 – please ask for/mark for the attention of Team 17.

Network update and news

Don’t forget that the Agency hub is now live. A briefing pack was issued earlier in the month. Please have a good look around the site to understand the various ways this can support the growth of your agency.

As you’ll all be aware, we have a real stretch in our ambition to move from incumbent paper based processes, towards more digital efficiency, whether that’s process improvement or more complex system changes. A lot of fantastic work has been done across various areas so far but we still have a way to go.

More about plans for digital & network updates & news

We will continue to focus on offering digital initiatives to support our face to face service. Your DM will be sharing information to ensure that all colleagues across the business know how they can contribute to this. We’d appreciate your support in sharing and embedding these messages within your teams – they’re simple but effective ways we can promote digital and change customer behaviour. 

Your DM can also discuss your specific agency's figures – total customers, how many we have an email address for, how many are e-enabled etc, as we’ll be looking to drive an increase in both in 2020 as an absolute necessary to remain relevant in the current environment.

Just a short update on previous messages around the WAN upgrade - work is continuing to ensure the lines are installed in all agencies, please continue to allow contractors access during this process. A further update will be provided in February detailing the arrangements for the switchover scheduled for February & March; this will be done during working hours but with minimal disruption.

Finally

As you know, our communities are really important to us. We are about ‘Real Help with Real Life’ and having a big impact in all of our communities is essential for making this happen.  Thank you to so many of you who took part in the YBS community programme in 2019. We made a huge impact.

90% of agencies took part in fundraising for EYH in 2019, raising £22,213 throughout the year – that’s a 23% increase on 2018, meaning that together as a retail network we raised £128,234 for EYH. As an organisation we’ve raised over £780,000 throughout the partnership with EYH – smashing our target. The money raised has so far housed 472 young people, plus 82 children.

More on our achievements & 2020 plans

The Charitable Foundation has also donated to 366 local charities up and down the country, 73 nominated by agencies. Small Change Big Difference opt ins on new accounts currently stands at around 50%, this might seem static but actually, thanks to your hard-work, an 10,000 additional accounts have joined the scheme in the past 12 months – this is a real win!

We’ve got some great plans for community in 2020.

• Our partnership with EYH will finish in the Summer and as you should be aware we are currently seeking applications from new charity partners. We have a rigorous selection process and representatives from the agency network alongside others from across the business will be involved in shortlisting possible charities, before we are all invited to vote.  During January your team had the opportunity to nominate a new charity.
  
• In 2019 we piloted a series of events in branches. The Money Minds mini-events were really successful and over the year the retail network ran 85 sessions with over 300 children. These helped improve financial skills of children, built links with non-customers and schools, and resulted in lots of positive product conversations, appointments booked and new accounts opened. Thank you to Barnstaple agency who took part in October half-term. I know a few agencies have already been in touch with the community team to arrange to run Money Minds events.
  
• There are 10 agencies (and 98 branches) taking part in a Fraud Event in February – leading informal conversations to raise awareness with customers of the different types of fraud, top tips for keeping safe etc. There will be more support and information on these and other events very soon.

The community team will be sending out new resources in Q1 which should give a fresh look to community in your agency and help resource you better. Watch out for these.

Take a look at our savings blog

As we move the ‘Growth Series’ communications towards more of a YBS focus, take a look at our new blog – ‘Helping your customers get into good savings habits’. The article covers some great tips to increase their ability to save more, without really noticing and also talks about matching your customer’s needs to our savings range.