One Bank - Feb

Our Values

ENTERPRISING

We’re entrepreneurial, creative and authentic.

TOGETHER

We believe in one shared vision and that we’re all vital cogs in the wheel. When we rise together, everyone succeeds.

From the Editor

Hello and welcome to our new look and feel employee magazine - for our people, by our people! We've listened to you and created a new monthly bank-wide publication, keeping you in the loop with what we're all up to - plus, anything exciting that's coming up! We're always interested to hear your feedback.

onebank@tandem.co.uk

Enjoy!

Tandem team building at Leighton Hall, Carnforth

A Message From CEO Alex Mollart

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the new look and feel employee magazine – One Bank!

‘One Bank’ brings our people together, in an inclusive way, under one brand, one voice, one Tandem! 2022 saw the roll out of our News Flash and Ring The Bell emails, along with our advent calendar countdown videos, and now with the introduction of Townhalls, a new Ask ExCo mailbox and monthly lunches, as well as Tandem TV comms – we’re sharing more information with you, in more ways, than ever before!

As revealed in the recent Townhall, our mission is clear –we’re here to make it easier for more people to choose a greener lifestyle. To help us achieve this, we have our five North Stars – Impact, Customer, Growth, Business, Transformation and People.

These will help focus our attention and drive performance. I believe these are key to our success, and act as a great focus for us all, as we each play our part. Our strategy’s been born out of our North Starshelping customers to Save, Borrow and Spend a little bit greener.

Finally, our BEST Values of Brave, Enterprising, Simple and Together, reinforce all of the above. They are what drive our behaviours as Tandem people and empower us to go above and beyond – for the bank, for our colleagues, for our customers. Banking for a greener future.

Best wishes, Alex.

‘We’re here to make it easier for more people to choose a greener lifestyle’

A day in the life of Facilities

Each month, we’re going to showcase a department or team, who we believe are the unsung heroes of Tandem. Who are they? What do they do? This month, we focus our attention on the Facilities team and speak to Head of Facilities, Debbie Waterman...

Who else makes up your team?

Amber Fordham Receptionist based in Blackpool

Faye Reynolds

Facilities Assistant based in Blackpool

Supports all sites

Olivia Gatehouse

Receptionist in Cardiff office

Joined Tandem in January!

Carla Guttridge

Executive Assistant for Alex Mollart, CEO. In Blackpool or hybrid working

Andrew Hurst

Educational Facilitator

Works in Blackpool or in schools and colleges to educate young people (16−18 year olds) in our Financial Education Programme.

What is the team responsible for?

Briefly introduce yourself Debbie:

As Head of Facilities, I manage and over see a team of unsung heroes in the bank who are responsible for all Facilities, office Management and Financial Education services.

I've been at Tandem since 2004, working in various roles across the business, including Director of Group Services (including HR, Office Management, Office Admin) and was the key driving force for introducing ESG and sustainability initiatives into the bank.

I tend to work from my home farm near Chester, so you'll typically find me in the Blackpool office on a Thursday.

The team are responsible for A LOT!! The team, and it's role, has grown significantly since the 2022 Tandem and Oplo acquisition. We're responsible for all 5 sites and over 500 employees' health, safety and wellbeing. From ensuring the post is allocated to the correct person, ordering enough milk for everyone’s morning cuppa (brew!), and all the way through to creating amazing environments for us all to enjoy working in, policies for enforcement, and ensuring the health, safety and welfare of our people across all sites. Ultimately, Facilities ensure the smooth running of our offices and all utility needs linked with such as well as larger projects.

Can you share what you and the team have delivered over the last 6−12 months and are working on?

• Designed and rebranded office interiors & exteriors across the group portfolio

• Designed and distributed branded workwear

• Refurbishment of Durham offices and renegotiation of Durham lease

• Created the Fin Ed programme, The Bus – from scratch

• Improving EPC ratings across the offices

• Security across the portfolio

• Iron Mountain – offsite files

• Providing Sit / Stands desktops – increasing energy levels and concentration.

• Health and Safety group audits and risk assessments

• Developing a new waste management / recycling strategy across the group

• Procurement cost efficiencies

• Relocated, designed and rebranded new Cardiff office.

• Currently sourcing a new office in London

• T&E policy and procedure

• Repairs and renewals as and when required

• Events organisers – team building, parties, R&R’s etc -, internally and externally

Financial Education Programme Launch: Friday 27 January saw the successful launch of our Financial Education Programme. Tandem hosted the event at our Head Office in Blackpool, welcoming several educational leaders from local schools, colleges and football academies, plus two local MPs. We showcased our six key modules of Financial Lifecycle, Borrowing, Budgeting, Credit Scores, Financial Security Online and Wage Slips, as well as our future ambitions for the programme.

Feeding the workforce: Thanks to our ESG manager Holly Wadeson, we’ve introduced breakfast stations at each of our sites, offering fresh fruit, cereal bars, a selection of porridges, biscuits and cereals, as well as more hearty snacks to provide sustenance for anyone who’s not had time to grab breakfast before heading into work, or has forgotten to bring their lunch!

Re-branding

Is there anything else you’d like to share with the business?

New Travel and Expenses Policy: This month we launch our new Travel and Expenses Policy, streamlining hotel bookings (via our new partner hotels), and harmonising various legacy policies, under one new Tandem policy. All booking requests should now be sent to facilities@tandem.co.uk. Keep your eyes peeled for further communications!

In The Spotlight

Tandem rewards savings customers with Top Up Launch

In the Spotlight is a special feature each month, focused on our products and business areas. This month’s focus is on our Savings Team and a newly launched Top Up offering…

Recently named Savings Champion’s Best App-Based Savings Provider, Tandem’s Savings Team has recently launched an interest rate Top Up for its instant access savings accounts.

This new launch lays an early marker for 2023, as Tandem looks to support banking for a greener future with customers’ savings supporting green lending and initiatives.

What does this mean?

Customers are invited to apply the rate to their instant access savings account –adding an increased rate on top of their existing rate, which will apply for 12 months.

The below shows an example Top Up rate that would apply:

• Underlying rate 2.55% AER (variable)

• Top Up 0.20% AER (variable)

• New total rate including Top Up 2.75% AER (variable)

What is an AER?

AER stands for Annual Equivalent Rate and illustrates what the interest rate would be if interest was paid and compounded each year. This allows customers to compare easily what return they can expect from their savings over time.

How does the Top Up work?

Applying the Top Up doesn’t change the underlying Instant Access Savings Account and customers will still have instant access to their money, won’t need to go through the account opening process again, and will automatically get any changes to the Top Up rate if they’re inside their Top Up period.

“At Tandem, we’re constantly looking at ways to ensure our customers are rewarded and have access to some of the most competitive savings products in the market. By introducing our savings Top Up, we can reward our customers and ensure they are receiving a great rate on their hard-earned savings. “We’ve made it really simple for our customers to Top Up their current instant access interest rate and will be in touch with customers to provide them a link to the Tandem App to apply, or apply the rate on the phone. Before the Top Up period comes to an end, we’ll be in touch in plenty time to let them know.”

Ben Mitchell Director of Savings at Tandem Bank

Once their Top Up period has come to an end, if there’s a Top Up being offered at the time, customers will be able to add the new Top Up to their account. Existing customers who chose not to add the Top Up will still remain on their existing rate.

What Savings products do we offer?

Tandem offers a range of savings products, including instant access and 1, 2, 3 and 5 year fixed rate offerings,

all of which are competitively priced and regularly feature in the best buy tables.

How can our employees open a Savings account?

To open an Instant Access Savings Account, simply download the Tandem Bank App. It’s fast, secure and the best platform to save and build your money! Now available on both Apple and Android devices or follow the link below.

Tandem Impact

Our ESG Strategic Framework

Banking for a greener future. Our mission is ‘to make it easier for more people to choose a greener lifestyle’, and so we’ve developed an Economical, Social and Governance (ESG) strategic framework. Our goals focus around 3 pillars of Product, Planet and People.

Mission: We’re here to make it easier for

We will become the leading greener bank

Greener products

We will ensure at least 50% of our lending is allocated to our greener products

By 2027

Partnering for change

We will ensure all our retail partners have met the threshold of our ESG Assessment

By 2026

We will accelerate progress to zero carbon living by partnering with like-minded organisations

From 2023

We will regenerate nature and emissions in our operations

Zero carbon

We will achieve net zero in our own operations (scopes 1 & 2)

By 2026

We will achieve net zero in our scope 3 emissions (To be finalised through Inspired Energy’s carbon baselining and SBTi alignment activities)

for more people to choose a greener lifetyle

Planet and reach net zero carbon operations and value chain

Eliminate waste in operations

We will remove all unnecessary waste from our operations and send zero waste to landfill

By 2026

People

We will nurture our employees and support our local communities

Great place to work

We will be one of the ‘UK’s best places to work’

By 2025

Community engagement

We will support financial literacy and inclusion of 100,000 people across the UK

By 2026

Tandem Impact

Q1 Integration Update

We kicked off January’s integration roadmap with a bang. With ambitious plans to be fully integrated by early 2023, we’re pleased to announce three further key transitions have successfully been delivered throughout January, for Oplo Home Loans and all Oplo Staff.

What does this mean for Oplo Home Loans and customers?

The team continues to operate as normal, with no change to the service we provide. Simply, we now operate under the rebranded name of Tandem Home Loans and all communications to customers have been rebranded.

All outgoing emails are sent from new Tandem email addresses, whilst any email sent to an old Oplo email address, will be forwarded.

All Oplo Home Loans customers were informed of the change in legal ownership to Tandem. With no change in service, all customers received a smooth transition to Tandem without noticing any difference – apart from the name change!

What about Oplo email addresses?

The Oplo email migration marked the second stage of the IT integration project. All employees now operate with a Tandem email address and all email, Teams and One Drive data has been migrated to Tandem. There’s further work to complete in 2023, to fully align onto a single infrastructure, but this is a major milestone.

Oplo SharePoint migration to Tandem Office 365

The successful SharePoint migration to the Tandem Office365 domain has also been completed. This means all Oplo SharePoint Data has successfully migrated into the Tandem domain. The migration work included:

• All Oplo SharePoint Data is now on the Tandem domain.

• All domain desktop icons have been redirected to Tandem SharePoint.

• All Oplo permissions have been transferred to your Tandem username.

• All Tandem users who previously accessed Oplo SharePoint resources, will retain their access.

Important information

Please read!

!

We still have more integration work to do which will be delivered in the next few weeks. Keep your eyes peeled for further updates!

Employee Engagement Results

Thanks again to everyone who completed the employee engagement survey in December. With an 89% participation rate, it’s great to see an increased number of you getting involved and sharing your thoughts – despite the festive period where annual leave was high.

Key headlines

• Overall Engagement scored 7.6 (out of 10) - increasing by +0.2

• Positive movement at Bank level for overall engagement

• Equally positive movement in majority of metrics

• Significant movement in Marketing, Data/Tech and Finance with Peakon baseline engagement scores.

• Total Reward theme had a further increase by +0.2

The Results

You can view the overall results and key drivers for engagement in the attached presentation. It includes scores for the whole Bank across the top of the chart, and then separate divisional scores below that.

What happens next?

With further positive scoring, we continue working collaboratively together to act and implement changes.

This data has now been shared with our ExCo team and every head of department (including specific comments and more detail on each of the separate measures for their division). Each team will then work through the results so that we can act at local levels, as well as across s the organisation.

Want to tell us more and have your say?

The great news is, now we’ve launched these regular engagement surveys, you can complete one every 5−6 weeks. So, if you have something you want to share with us to help make us a greater place to work, then you can!

7.6 Engagement Score

Good: Continuous improvement

Social Media Corner

Did you know, there’s more than 660 million users on LinkedIn alone?

Combine this with the reach of YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and beyond - social media creates a major opportunity for all of us to reach customers, prospects, partners, employees and potential new hires.

Across all our former brands, we’ve asked followers to find us on our new social channels as we evolve our content. It’s a great way to keep up to speed on what’s going on at Tandem and we’d encourage you all to follow us!

Are you the next TikTok star?

To help launch our Financial Education Programme on social media, we’re looking for people to help create TikTok content for our @moneytoksbytandem channel.

What do you have to do?

We’re looking for about 2 hours of your time in February, so this shouldn’t be resource-heavy, or interfere with your day-to-day job. We’ll provide the scripts and a short training session with tips on how to record and get the best videos, so all you need to do is be yourself!

Interested?

To find out more, please check with your line manager then drop us an email to marketing@tandem.co.uk. In the meantime, check out the types of content we’ll be looking to create here: www.tiktok.com/@moneytoksbytandem

OUR People

Announcements Key Milestones

Congratulations!! We have some amazing anniversaries to celebrate this month...

5 YEARS!

Daniel Gray Senior Credit Risk Analyst

I enjoy working for Tandem as it has given me lots of opportunities to learn new skills and apply some things which I learnt at university. The support you get from other teams when doing your work is unprecedented, help is always available for those who need it. Essentially it’s the people that make Tandem a brilliant company to work for.

I would recommend Tandem to others because of what they are trying to do with the future of the planet. Everyone kind of needs to band together and Tandem are leading from the front. There are exciting times ahead with the company and hopefully we can continue to make a difference.

5 YEARS! Jemma Partis Customer Outcomes Testing Analyst

I have enjoyed my 5 years here, I love my job now as much as I did the day I started! I am passionate about my role, and feel empowered to make my own decisions. Management are very supportive of me, and I have a great team who will always accept me for who I am.

5 YEARS!

Danielle Culley Compliance Officer

The thing I love the most about Tandem is its people. Since my first day in the Home Loans Lending team, to now being a part of the Compliance team, I have felt nothing but support and encouragement from all my colleagues and managers over the years. Even on a bad day I can be sure that if I go into the office, I will be laughing or smiling within a few minutes!

When I first started the business as a packaging assistant, I had only just graduated and had no idea what I wanted to do as a career. Over the last 5 years, the bank has given me the ability to learn and understand what it is that I enjoy doing. Every day is a learning day working as a Compliance Officer. Whether it be something big or something small, I gain an extra piece of knowledge that I didn’t know the previous day. No day is ever the same.

I’d recommend Tandem to anyone who enjoys a challenge and is a team player!

10 YEARS!

Fiona O’Brien Training & Competency Assistant

I have loved watching the company change throughout the 10 years I have been here. There have been lots of changes, but we always adapt to these changes in a positive way. I am very proud of how far we have come, and where we are heading. This for me has made the past 10 years fly.

Working at Tandem has given me the opportunity to learn more about the financial world, and myself, which has given me the skills to be successful at my role and what I do.

The culture, warmth and friendliness of the Home Loans department is second to none, and I couldn’t imagine working elsewhere! I work with the most inspiring and talented people. I am also inspired by how we put the customers at the heart of everything we do.

If you try your best, remain humble, work hard, and have the best intentions, then I truly believe you will be successful in your career at Tandem. Here’s to the next 10 years!

FinancialHealthcheck

Each month, we bring you tips on how to stay on top of your finances and plan for a better future.

Making small changes around the home (or office) can really help to lower your bills. We’ve explained more below. Remember, if you’re finding things difficult at the moment and struggling with your bill payments, there are many organisations offering help – such as Citizen’s Advice.

Reduce your bills

Did you know, you can spread payments over the year with a Direct Debit? It’s better than having to pay in one lump sum, and you can pay weekly, monthly, or quarterly – the choice is yours. Most utility companies will even give you a discount for paying by Direct Debit!

Working from home? Stay warm!

If you’re working from home and trying to stay warm by having excessive hot drinks, reduce your electricity bill and only boil your kettle once. Fill it up, boil it, then store the water in a thermal flask and only use what you need.

Protect your home this winter

Winter weather can be unpredictable, but when we feel the cold, your water pipes will too! So, if you’re putting on an extra layer, you might want to think about doing the same for your pipes. Sub-zero temperatures can cause your water pipes to freeze and burst – costing you financially – as well as time and effort to put things right!

We know the rising cost of living is making things difficult for many households across the UK, so in this month’s Financial Healthcheck, we’ve suggested some easy wins to help knock pounds off your bills.

FinancialEducation

has arrived!

At the end of January, we hosted our Financial Education launch event at the Blackpool office.

We were joined by two local MP's - Paul Maynard and Mark Menzies - as well as representatives from AFC Fylde, Blackpool and The Fylde College, Blackpool Football Club, Preston College, The Boathouse Youth Charity, Lancaster and Morecambe College, The Talk, and LLC.

It was a great day of collaboration and officially launched the project showcasing how Tandem's FinEd Programme fills the gaps in the next generation's financial literacy education.

Read more about the event here

“all aboard the FinEd Bus”

Lesson demonstration on the new Tandem Bus

Alex meets Mark Menzies, MP for Fylde

Andrew Hurst, Alex Mollart and Paul Maynard, MP for Blackpool North

Delegates discuss the need for a Financial Literacy support

MeetOurCulture Champions

As we integrate the BEST Values into our everyday lives, we continue to recognise those who live and work by our core values and walk the talk –leading by example.

Each month, we'll spotlight three culture champions who have demonstrated they're using our core BEST Values to help make Tandem great!

“I would like to say thank you to Tim Nicholas who helped me with my account … and offered excellent customer service going ‘above and beyond’ in his job role. Thank you for your help answering my questions and helping me with my complaint. Your new staff members should listen to Tim and Jeremy [Griffith’s] calls, as they show what customer service is all about, and how to deliver excellent customer service. Thank you once again you made me feel like a valued customer.”

Nominated by a customer.

Nominee: Tim Nicholas (Customer Service Adviser, Home Improvement Servicing - Cardiff) Culture Champion for being Brave and Enterprising…

Nominee: IT team in Blackpool Culture Champions for being Simple and Together...

“I' like to give a big thanks to the I.T department in Blackpool, for being culture champions and displaying our BEST Values of Simple and Together.

Despite being extremely busy and rushed off their feet most days, they have worked together with me, and armed me with the tools I needed to really help and support me. They're shining stars.”

Nominated by Trevor Tattersall, Project Manager

Nominee: Ibraheim Hussain (Specialist Support Agent in Specialist Servicing Operations) Culture Champion for being Enterprising and Together...

“Ibraheim has been nominated as a culture champion for displaying BEST Values of Enterprising and Together. He worked throughout the entire holiday period, enabling myself and Shavaun to spend time with our families. He regularly goes above and beyond the call of duty and stays past his shift, to complete tasks and make our customers happy.”

Nominated by Phillip Eastham Specialist Support Team Leader

Nominate a colleague!

We want to continue to grow our culture and that starts with each and every one of you! All nominations submitted need to demonstrate how they're Brave, Enterprising, Simple or Together.

SEND YOUR NOMINATION(S) TO:

internalcomms@tandem.co.uk

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