Message from our Chief Operating Officer
We've achieved a great deal in getting where we are today. We have 1.9 million customers, nearly 28,000 agents in six countries and over 5,600 employees.*
At the same time there are questions we need regularly to be asking: How can we manage our reputation better? How can we ensure that our stakeholders understand the business? How can we better manage our business within the Financial Services Authority's (FSA) Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) principles?
These are the types of questions that came up when I chaired the first International Personal Finance Corporate Responsibility Steering Committee in 2007. Here we sat down with members of the senior management team to revisit what we're doing to embed corporate responsibility into our operations and ensure we're focusing on the right issues in the right way.
For our customers, it's a question of providing relevant products in a responsible way - which is precisely why we're aligning our practices to the FSA's TCF initiative.
At the same time there are questions we need regularly to be asking: How can we manage our reputation better? How can we ensure that our stakeholders understand the business? How can we better manage our business within the Financial Services Authority's (FSA) Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) principles?
These are the types of questions that came up when I chaired the first International Personal Finance Corporate Responsibility Steering Committee in 2007. Here we sat down with members of the senior management team to revisit what we're doing to embed corporate responsibility into our operations and ensure we're focusing on the right issues in the right way.
For our customers, it's a question of providing relevant products in a responsible way - which is precisely why we're aligning our practices to the FSA's TCF initiative.
We want to do the best for our own people. We have ambitious goals and need the best people to get us there. This requires new talent management and leadership programmes to seek out and develop our best people.
Going further, we're communicating our values through the company so they become part of the mindset and start to influence every working relationship - particularly between agent and customer.
For the communities in which we operate, we want to make a difference in areas that relate to our business and industry. Hence the new focus on financial literacy in our community investment programme.
We also want to take account of the views and concerns of investors and other stakeholders in the way we shape our corporate responsibility programmes and report progress against them. This is our first report and we plan to report annually on our corporate responsibility activities.
This section of our website explains how corporate responsibility will support the company's challenging and exciting growth objectives. It details what we're planning to do and what progress we've made so far in managing the social, environmental and governance issues material to our business. We hope it demonstrates that we're travelling in the right direction.
Going further, we're communicating our values through the company so they become part of the mindset and start to influence every working relationship - particularly between agent and customer.
For the communities in which we operate, we want to make a difference in areas that relate to our business and industry. Hence the new focus on financial literacy in our community investment programme.
We also want to take account of the views and concerns of investors and other stakeholders in the way we shape our corporate responsibility programmes and report progress against them. This is our first report and we plan to report annually on our corporate responsibility activities.
This section of our website explains how corporate responsibility will support the company's challenging and exciting growth objectives. It details what we're planning to do and what progress we've made so far in managing the social, environmental and governance issues material to our business. We hope it demonstrates that we're travelling in the right direction.
John Harnett
Chief Operating Officer