Your AGM questions answered

Addressing the risks and opportunities linked to climate change remains high on our agenda. In 2022 the Skipton Group took further steps to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and support members in taking steps to reduce their own. This included:

• beginning the journey of screening even more of our value chain emissions (including those generated from the homes we lend on) to identify the full range of opportunities for carbon reduction
• establishing a net zero strategy, with the aim of halving operational emissions by 2030 and achieving net zero in our operations and value chain by 2045
• starting to offer a free home energy efficiency report (‘EPC Plus’) to all home-owning members so they can understand their home’s energy efficiency and what opportunities there might be to improve this
• launching green additional borrowing so that money could be put towards home energy efficiency/environmental improvements
• continuing to monitor potential climate-related risk exposures for our lending portfolio through modelling of climate-related and property EPC data (with the risk currently assessed as ‘Low’)
• beginning to screen our suppliers for their environmental credentials, including emissions monitoring, working with third party EcoVadis
• reducing our operational heating emissions by over 84% by switching to biogas across our premises
• redesigning our Financial Advice investing proposition to include a new range of sustainable passive funds offered by abrdn and Vanguard Asset Management.

The interest rates members receive on their savings reflect a whole range of factors, including, but not limited to, what the Bank of England Base rate is, interest members pay on mortgages and savings market rates. We increased interest rates on savings products throughout 2022 continuing to pay savings rates above the market average* with a number of recognised best buy products available to new and existing members. Our goal is to have good value savings products that we can sustain.

*We paid an average savings rate of 1.16% in the 12 months to December 2022. This was 0.52% over the rest of market average for banks and building societies, delivering £104.7m of additional benefit to our savers.

Source: Rest of market as defined in CACI’s Current Account and Savings Database, Stock, including fixed and variable rates. CACI is an independent company that provides financial benchmarking data from over 34 savings providers, who together hold £1.016tn of cash in savings accounts as at end December 2022. Additional interest calculation based on rate differential and Skipton savings balances in 2022.

We are committed to a branch network presence and look to ensure that our branches all provide a valuable benefit to members. In branch, we're delighted to offer support in the moments that matter, with information and guidance for savers and access to financial advice to help members achieve their long-term financial goals. We'll put more investment in to help colleagues deal with more complex issues face-to-face, so members get the best value from our skills.

A diverse and inclusive culture is an integral part of our core values and is key to ensuring the Society delivers a great service to its members. We're really pleased that in 2022 we appointed our first female chair in our 170-year history. We also recognise that we have more to do.

All appointments are made to the Board on the basis of merit and the appointment process is based on their knowledge, skills, experience, and suitability for the role, so that they can deliver value to the Society and its members as well as meeting the regulatory requirements. In making appointments and reviewing its composition, the Board considers all aspects of diversity, including age, experience, and gender.

We want all people to feel welcome to work at the Society and to fulfil their potential, irrespective of their gender, ethnicity, age, disability, or sexual orientation. We're ambitious to increase diversity further both on the Board and in the Society, but this does depend on finding and developing appropriately qualified candidates. We will continue to work hard in this area both in terms of identifying people and developing those who already work for us.