INTERVIEW: How Saffron Building Society built a new brand framework

Saffron Building Society is reaping the strategic benefits of a newfound focus on its core offering for affluent customers, says its Head of Marketing, Product and Insight.

Marcus Buck took on the role in May 2022, a new position that merged marketing, product and insight, which had previously been separate functions within the business. Marcus brought experience not just from fellow mutual Yorkshire Building Society, but also consumer brands such as KFC and Unilever.

His viewpoint aligned nicely with that of Chief Commercial Officer John Penberthy Smith, who like Marcus had worked outside the industry, in this case at Vodafone and 3.

“He realised it was mad to be designing a product on the one hand with an insight delivered by somebody else, with marketing just as the communications rather than a strategic part of the process.”

Since then, Marcus has been working to bring those three teams to work more closely together, giving each side of the business a lead on each team and dedicated resource where possible. This has allowed him to make the customer “the start and end point of what we do.”

Previously, he says, Saffron had been held back by a lack of clarity about who its customers were. The insight team had been kept separate, meaning product, “the engine of the business” didn’t always know who the main customer base and who it should be targeting.

“That combined with consumer duty has been perfect timing,” explains Marcus. “We’ve got this newly integrated team, we’ve got the impetus from consumer duty and this really deep piece of work to understand who Saffron’s customers are has been my sort of real foundational piece of work.”

For Saffron, it was dedicated research which found that the society is seen as a premium brand across both the mortgage and savings businesses. For mortgage customers, Saffron targets “affluent professionals with complex income. “ It tends to attract customers who are on the second or third step of the mortgage ladder, who have had successful careers and then gone self-employed. Servicing these clients means taking into account criteria such as pension and investment trust income.

“All of a sudden their income is quite complex because it’s not PAYE anymore, but they’re really good at what they do and can command really high fees.”

On the other side of the business, Saffron works with older affluent savers, as well as families and local businesses.

There is a synergy here with Saffron’s roots in Saffron Walden, a small town in north-west Essex. Marcus describes it as a place full of “people who care about their local community and who want to see the town do well,” filled with independent stores.

He views Saffron as a similar type of brand – a boutique local independent retailer of financial services Saffron’s target customers tend to have a preference, Marcus says, of “going local, going organic, spending money if they know the quality of the produce is going to be good.

“That’s what I’m trying to represent through the brand.”

The insight has led to a rebrand at both the consumer-focused savings business and the intermediary-focused mortgage business. The rebrand has kept things recognisable, Marcus explains, with the colour scheme for example kept the same.

“We’ve just made both brands a lot more flexible, a lot more modern, a lot more digital-first and crucially a lot more premium.

“We needed to make sure that not only the sign above the door, but the branch itself and the services offered online are quite premium.”

This clarity around what Saffron does has hugely increased efficiency. Previously, campaigns could take weeks to create because there was no structure, brand guidelines or best practice templates.

Now, “because we’ve actually got a modern brand system, each brief is not starting from scratch.

“It’s a win-win because we’re spending less time producing more stuff of a higher quality.”

While marketers will always want more resources, Marcus encourages people not to skip the hard work of understanding what the brand is about as a foundational step.

Distinguishing within the sector

This major brand work has also coincided with behind-the-scenes tech upgrades, designed to make things smoother and remove sludge. This includes two-factor authentication, upgrades to the app in terms of self-service.

There is also a live chat facility on the website which he says is unusual in two ways – one, it is not a bot, and two, customers can conduct full transactions on the live chat once they have passed security.

“We find that is really quite powerful: it’s exactly the same as ringing someone up or seeing them face-to-face, and it’s really built their trust in that as a channel.”

The final big change happening at Saffron is a project called “driven by data”. It’s led by the IT team but has a major influence on the marketing agenda.

“We’re revamping the architecture of how we use data as Saffron and bringing in a lot of what you’d see in bigger organisations such as self-service, flexible data sets, and data visualisation. The project will touch every part of the business, but as a marketer I’m obviously excited about the new types of insight it will be able to deliver.

“Insight now sits within marketing and product so I’m really keen to make sure that we prove how we’re using it.”

While this probably would have happened anyway, Marcus thinks consumer duty has accelerated the project and doubly made sure that there’s a customer-first lens on it.

“This isn’t just deciding what good data looks like. There’s always going to be a customer at the end of the outcome and consumer duty sharped our mind to make sure that’s the case so we’re not taking something technically brilliant that doesn’t help us get to a good customer outcome.”

The rest of 2024 will see Saffron launching its children’s range, a new professional mortgage in the affluent space, and changes coming into mortgage criteria to make it easier for brokers to place business with the society. There will also be changes to savings platforms.

Marcus notes that Saffron on paper has much in common with other building societies, but he emphasises a lesser desire in Saffron to be all things to all people.

“There’s this anxiety in the industry that we’ve got to be serving cradle to grave, and we’ve got to have a young person’s proposition because otherwise they won’t become a saver with you when they retire.

“We just don’t think that’s true. In the wider industry and wider economy, brands cater to different age groups perfectly successfully. They don’t need to offer everything to every age group.”

This focus on older and affluent customers means that Saffron can be much more efficient. He disputes any idea that older people are slower adopters of technology, noting that while most of Saffron’s savings customers are over 50, its most used channel is online and second is the app.

However, these customers do value a high street presence, with the ability to conduct complex transactions, and the ability to speak to somebody if they ever need help.

“We  see branches as part of the mix of service. It may decline in patches or are certain times of the year,, but our accounts and balances have gone up, and we’re happy with the model we have.”

Ultimately, Marcus thinks what distinguishes Saffron is being able to execute consistently and successfully on its strategy. He praises the mutual’s business development teams and efficient lines of command, but ultimately cites the firm’s culture as the key differentiator.

“Do [other mutuals] have the drive and hunger to make those decisions quickly? Or do they put it off – do they go around the houses, or get scared by doing something new?

“The differentiator,” Marcus says, “is how absolutely committed you are to executing. Lots of people say they do, but brokers tell us very few actually deliver.”