SINCE THE PANDEMIC

STARTED , WE ’ VE HAD TWO OF

OUR STRONGEST YEARS – NOT

JUST FOR LENDING , BUT ALSO BUILDING

SAVINGS , GROWTH AND CUSTOMERS . there ’ s so much information in the world that it gets more and more complex to understand what to do with it .

How important is technology for driving financial inclusion and how can the industry ensure representation across all demographics ?

If you look at other territories , we ’ ve seen technology unlock financial inclusion for millions of people , such as through M-PESA in Kenya . In the UK , we come from a slightly different background and quite traditional provision but during the pandemic we ’ ve seen more and more people getting familiar and confident with using technology .

When talking about groups that don ’ t want to use technology , people often think this is elderly people but that ’ s not been our experience historically . It ’ s true that there are groups of people that don ’ t want to make the transition , but we ’ ve seen technology being used more by every single age group .

The role of the financial services industry is key on two fronts . First , how do we continue to make sure that we can push the security of technology so people feel very confident about that .

Secondly , we need to ensure simplicity of usage . As soon as access to banking went on to tablets and phones , more and more people were able to access services by using fingerprint or facial ID . I think it ’ s absolutely key that we continue to do that and support people .

How important is technology to Saffron Building Society for ensuring ability to scale and how do you plan to grow the business further ?

In the two-year period since the pandemic started , we ’ ve had two of our strongest years – not just for lending , but also building savings , growth and customers in a period when people have been working from their living rooms .

That has been possible because of the technology which has allowed online submission and processing . We ’ ve also been able to remotely put regulatory compliance solutions in place . And we ’ ve worked on how we collaborate via means such as Teams .

In these two years , it ’ s probably moved us forward 10 years in terms of moving our expectations of what technology can do for us . If we look towards the world of hybrid work ahead of us , which is something that we are embracing , we found that we can now employ people throughout the UK and have access to far more talent than we have done historically .

In terms of further growth , we ’ ve already invested a lot of time and money in terms of our core banking platforms and that ’ s put us in good stead for the next couple of years . There are two factors which are becoming abundantly clear to us now that we need to be mindful of . First , customers love speed and simplicity . They want to be able to do things when they want to do them and they want it to be easy , which really shines a light on poor , clunky technology processes .

Every decision that we ’ re taking with our banking platform , which we ’ re upgrading now , is to make sure that we are open to do these things . It ’ s really clear that we cannot be shutting things off and with open architecture now , one of the things that we really want to have is the ability to choose who we work with next , in terms of micro services , or other provision as well . �

46 intelligent

. tech

Intelligent SME . tech