Chief Executive at Saffron

I am really excited about our new Plan, Save, Get Married service which has now gone live. In partnership with Wedding Magazine, this website allows couples to plan their wedding and save up for different aspects – basically with a view to starting married life happily and debt free! Visit www.weddingmagazine.co.uk/saffron to find out more.

I’m the first to admit that I’m no expert when it comes to weddings, so I’m introducing a guest on my blog. Cherrelle Varley is one of our Saffron Direct Contact Centre team, and I’m sure many of our members have had the pleasure of speaking to her over the last couple of years. Most of us at Saffron are aware that she’s getting married this year, which gives you an idea of how excited she is about her wedding! I’m handing over to her to tell you about Plan, Save, Get Married. As our first account-opener, I can think of no one better…

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Pete and I met when I was working in the Baraccuda pub in Royston. He came in to see me all the time and it sort of went from there. I used to go to see him after my shift and before long I was at his place more than mine, so I moved in. Four months later we were watching ‘Juno’ and having a korma and he got out the most beautiful engagement ring I’ve ever seen and asked me to marry him! That was the night before I started working at Saffron so everyone at Saffron probably thinks I’m wedding mad….

Pete and I are getting married on 10^th September in a 5 star hotel in Cyprus. There are 22 people coming out with us – all family and our very closest friends. Then when we get back we’re having a big party with 150 guests at the local golf club – like the evening reception but a bit later on.

When it comes to the money, obviously we’re saving a bit by not having a big church wedding with cars and a dozen bridesmaids, but going abroad and having a UK reception isn’t cheap. His parents have helped us out with a contribution to the wedding itself. My mum is paying for the wedding cake and my dad is paying for my dress, which is brilliant, but we’ve still got to get to and from Cyprus, have enough money to enjoy our time out there, and pay for the reception when we get back. The most expensive thing for the wedding is definitely the reception food – it’s just a buffet but we have to pay for about 150 people to eat, so it’s quite a lot of money to find.

As it’s only seven months away, we have quite a lot organised already; pretty much everything apart from the reception décor and food. The golf club is quite dated so I’m going to work hard to make it special inside. Pete’s letting me go the whole hog on the party because it’s the one chance I have to be a wedding planner and we’ll have all the extras that we can afford!

I’m the first one to get married in my group of friends, and weddings in my family have been quite low-key; generally a registry office and reception afterwards. So no one knew how to do a church wedding or how to go about getting married abroad. Without anyone to ask, I have been using the internet and magazines for all my wedding planning, and the magazines have been costing me a fortune! I do buy four every month… If there had been a website with all of the information in one place, it would have been much less stressful and expensive and I found I especially needed some good advice on when you have to organise different parts of your wedding. I think it’s brilliant that Plan, Save, Get Married comes with emails telling you that sort of thing listing it all out for you.

I’m helping to promote Plan, Save, Get Married at the National Wedding Fair in London this weekend and am really really excited about it. For a bride-to-be, it is amazing! If I couldn’t go with work I was going to try and get tickets for it. It’s a bit different for someone getting married abroad but I still really wanted to go. I’m going to be looking for nice things for the reception and basically grabbing everything that I can. I’d also like to look at Groom’s outfits because I want Pete to look smart on the beach – or I’m going to look stupid in a wedding dress.  I am giving his mum quite specific instructions about what he should wear!

The thing I really like about Plan, Save, Get Married is that you can upload your pictures and bring them all together on the moodboard. You can log in and show people the different dresses you’re thinking about and get their opinions. It saves so much cutting out and glue, and lugging around a massive scrapbook file – your friends see you coming and think ‘nooo, not the file again!’! I’ve chosen my dress now, but for Pete’s outfit it’ll be great to bring ‘ideas’ to him and his mum.

The savings part of the website is the bit that I’d have found most useful.  Pete and I have found it really hard to keep track of our money for the wedding, especially with the gifts from people and the fact that we’ve got it in lots of different accounts. Some is in current accounts as well, so we’ve accidentally used some of that for other things. I think we could have managed it much better if we’d had the Wedding Saver account from the beginning. But I’m really chuffed that I have a Wedding Saver now. I’m still saving up for the reception, obviously, but also for spending money when we’re out in Cyprus because I want to enjoy our holiday and our wedding without worrying about not having the money. It’s going to be brilliant and I can’t wait!

You can find out all about Plan, Save, Get Married at www.weddingmagazine.co.uk/saffron.

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Questions are being asked about the future of rates - it’s not every day that Saffron get a mention on the BBC! You can view the article here.

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A couple of letters have come across my desk from Society members complaining about the interest they have received on one particular savings account with us.

The account in question is called Cashbuild 60. It was a traditional branch based account with 60 days notice required for penalty free withdrawal. The account has never paid as much as lower cost internet accounts or indeed ISA’s or bonds, but with base rates at an all time low its rate of interest became pretty derisory.

Between October 2008 and April 2009, the interest rate on the lowest balances reduced by 3.9%, although in the same period, Base Rate reduced by 4%. By July 2009 we had decided to make the product a closed issue (i.e. we decided to stop opening new accounts, but continue to service existing ones) as we had introduced a number of other products in our branches that were significantly more competitive.

The basis of both complaints is not just the rate, but the fact that we had not told the individuals personally about the rate reductions and that the products were now closed issues; which leaves me stuck between a sense of perhaps we could have done more vs. we do all that we can to keep members up to date with product changes.

Outside of the annual statement and full year’s rate details which we send out, all our product rates are available on posters in our branches and agencies and on our website. Additionally we advertise in a range of newspapers covering our catchment area whenever interest rates change. Last year we set up a new product registration service which allows members to register for emails informing them of new products and this year our branch staff have been under instruction to and worked hard to speak to members in lower paying accounts to make sure they are aware of our better offers.  In addition, we don’t have “new customer only” products; all our products are openly available to existing members and is some cases with better rates than for new ones.

We have not written to members individually to make them aware of rate changes, quite simply because the expense would have been prohibitive – something around £50,000 every time there was a rate change.  I do, however, think we have been sufficiently visible on rate changes and I do have a view that with the lowest base rates ever seen in this country, consumers have some responsibility to keep tabs on what rates are available from their providers. 

That said, I am exercising my mind on how we do what’s right here and we will therefore be increasing the volume on our new product email service and continuing to ensure that our branch and telephone staff are talking to members in lower paying accounts and letting them know what else we have available

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What building societies are good at are customer relationships. There are still 51 of us left in the UK and each society, whether national, a regional player like Saffron or a single branch local society has its own distinct personality and its own loyal membership base.

That said I am not sure you could say that building societies are the most efficient animals in the world. That is not because we don’t have the skills to be efficient, but more a function of a deep mutual believe that members and customers are the most important part of the business. Our members do own us after all.

Shareholder and profit maximising firms have long been managing continuous improvement, waste elimination and cost efficiency in their businesses, but many would argue that these efficiencies have been at the expense of customer service. All too often it is impossible to speak to the same member of staff twice, interaction is driven by scripts for the call centre staff and processes are just a little too robotic for my liking.

Most of us in the building society sector have focused hard on making our processes slicker but have resisted those at the sharp end, believing that customer interaction should be as personal as possible; but lack of automation and the breadth of training required to let staff actually converse rather than read a script, all add cost and arguably make us less efficient.

So what of the future? Can building societies find ways to save cost in order to continue to spend money on those critical customer interactions? Well I think we will have to. We are already at a structural disadvantage to the banks, due to our limited ways of raising capital. It is also fair to say that post the “global economic meltdown” the regulatory environment will get more stringent and this will undoubtedly add cost to running a regulated business. I don’t want Saffron’s’ members to have to pay through lower value products, so for me there has to be another way.

For 3 years now I have been talking in and around the sector about shared services as a route to a reduced cost base, but until now whilst others have liked the idea, none enough to take the plunge. I for one really struggle to understand why.

By shared services I mean joining forces with other mutuals to provide all the services that don’t influence the personality of the society. Things like procurement, IT equipment, payroll and some back office processes.

The Treasury have now said this is good idea and are keen to push the sector to investigate things further. In fact I am at a meeting at the House of Commons this week to discuss this very topic.

Shared services works in other countries, Germany has some good examples amongst its smaller banks; the Australian mutual sector does a lot of it. If they can make it work, we can too, I am sure of it.

I am continuing to bang the drum around the sector; I call it a GOBO (glimpse of the blindingly obvious).

I want to focus on what make Saffron different and share the cost and benefits of scale with others for those things that are very necessary but do not differentiate us like our staff and our relationships do.

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I am stupid sometimes, I should have not attempted the 80 mile trip to the office in such snowy conditions, but I have always had a sort of principle thing that says if the boss doesn’t make the effort to get in, why should the staff.

So once I had swept off the snow and defrosted the car, I duly left home at about 6-50am and drove delicately through the snowy scenes before me.

I was doing quite well too, until I entered Bedfordshire and then Hertfordshire and the snow seemed to get deeper and more resilient with each passing mile. The A507 was a car park, the A505 was too and there were lots of abandoned vehicles that had just been unable to make headway.

Determined to press on I turned out of the A505 jams just past Royston to follow my normal route through the villages into Saffron Walden.

Now my car is a 4 wheel drive (Quattro is the brand name for it) and that gave me some false sense of security that it would be capable of going where 2 wheel drive cars may struggle, but on a narrow stretch of road, the car decided that it wanted to face a different direction from that which I intended.

Now I count myself as an experienced driver, I average 45,000 miles per annum and always adjust my driving style to suit conditions, so as the car started to slide I did all the right things, I eased of the accelerator, steered into the skid and assumed that the Quattro system would do its magic, but no. Seconds later and very slowly and gracefully the car came to rest sideways across the road with both front and back wedged in deep snow.

I did what anyone would do in these circumstances, decided not to bother the AA on such a busy day and walked off to see if I could find a friendly farmer with a suitable tow vehicle.

After a short time a very kind lady with a Honda 4×4 stopped as I was walking. She had a tow rope (new and unused) and a shovel. So we dug a bit, connected the rope and pulled – nothing happened. Then a chap with a discovery turned up and this was able to do the deed. I was free.

These people were really nice at a time I needed help and eminently better prepared than I was. In fact soon after we all got going again, we all had to provide a push to another car struggling to make an incline, but with team work we made it happen. I made it to the office nearly 4 and half hours after leaving home.

Learning points for me? People are genuinely kind and rally together when needed and……carry a spade, rope and wellies in the car when snowing, or better still don’t use the car if the conditions out match it.

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