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How OneFamily is Inspiring Better Futures

May 2022

We want you to feel as proud as we are of the positive impact OneFamily has on the world.

This year’s Inspiring Better Futures report highlights how, as a OneFamily member, you’ve helped to promote financial wellbeing throughout society, supported young people in accessing education and training, and improved the life chances of thousands of people with support, advocacy and funding.

We’ve summarised just some of the activity from 2021 that's in line with the three pillars that underpin our vision:

Supporting and promoting financial wellbeing

Making education and training more accessible for more people, and

Improving people’s life chances with support, advocacy and well-placed funding.

All of this work is only possible thanks to our members. You’ve a lot to be proud of.

Read the summary below or download the full report.

Download the Inspiring Better Futures report

What we’re doing for our members and customers

As a member-owned organisation, we don’t have stakeholders to impress which leaves us free to reinvest our profits for our members’ benefit. Here’s how we’re doing just that.

We’re helping children with mental incapacity to access their child trust funds (CTFs).

Not only have we changed our own approach so that families don’t need to go through a lengthy and costly process, we’re also lobbying the UK government. We’re asking Westminster to make this simplified process the norm for the estimated 200,000 children who do not have mental capacity to access their CTF.

We’re making investing accessible for more people.

We do this by keeping our minimum investment levels really low. Our members have the option to invest only a small amount each month, which makes saving for the future achievable for more people.

We’re supporting education for young people.

We believe education is central to levelling the financial playing field for people from all backgrounds.

In 2021, 229 people benefited from our Young Person Education Grants, which aim to lessen the cost of training and education to make it a viable option for more people. OneFamily members aged between 15 and 19 years can apply for a grant for things like travel to attend a course or to help them buy a laptop.

We’ve also produced short videos to help demystify finance for our CTF customers, empowering them to make informed decisions about what to do with their money once they reach 18.

We’re helping our members save money.

Our new member benefits were launched at the end of 2021, and we’re continuing to roll them out to our members in 2022.

We’ve focused on offering resources that align with our key aim to support access to education and training, which includes apprenticeship funding, advice, training discounts, savings on books and IT equipment, our established education grants and everyday savings.

Don’t forget, members also have access to free lifetime mortgage advice from the OneFamily Advice team, who are completely independent and offer whole-of-market advice.

How we’re supporting our colleagues

It’s important to us that we prioritise our colleagues’ wellbeing and actively work to increase diversity in our workforce. We believe this provides a broader perspective and makes us understand and support the needs of members from all walks of life.

Here’s how we’ve worked towards this goal in 2021.

We’re celebrating and embracing diversity.

In 2021, we’ve continued to build on our Diversity and Inclusion programme. This includes:

Launching the Women in Finance Mentor Programme and committing to a minimum of 30% female representation in senior roles. We’ve also reduced our gender pay gap to below the national average, at the end of 2021 this was 14.6%

As a Diversity Champion member of Stonewall, we launched an LGBTQ+ allyship, created resources for colleagues to share their experiences and, for the sixth year running, celebrated Brighton Pride.

We’ve signed up to the Race at Work charter and are offering internships as part of the #10,000 Black Interns initiative. We also provide space for BAME colleagues to share their experiences and stories of what makes them ‘proud to be’.

We're helping our colleagues to reduce their carbon footprints

Staff members are supported to buy electric vehicles and e-bikes and our employee pension scheme now invests in a fund with a sustainable focus.

We're encouraging career progression

More than 10% of the OneFamily workforce benefited from formal career development in 2021, including promotions, secondments and apprenticeships. We also delivered a leadership development programme and a training pilot for managers, to help leaders further develop the skills to support others.

How we’re helping the local community and beyond

Playing an active role in our communities has always been central to our ethos but in 2021 we went a step further and formally partnered with three national and three local charities who are all working towards aims that align with our own. We’re working with IntoUniversity, Elderly Accommodation Counsel and Citizens Online nationally, and Spear Brighton Trust, Team Domenica and the Clock Tower Sanctuary locally.

This means we don’t simply give money to our chosen charities, we also offer hands-on practical help and support. Our colleagues are able to spend three days a year volunteering, and with more than 400 staff members at OneFamily this can make a real difference. After seeing how they can help, many go on to make regular commitments in their spare time.

To date, we’ve helped 221 great causes nominated by our customers, including food banks, charities and schools, by gifting Community Grants.

The choices we’re making to reduce our environmental impact

As an investor in OneFamily products, you may already be aware that since 2020, we’ve been committed to buying stocks and shares in climate-friendly funds. We actively select businesses that are taking steps to reduce their negative impact on the world, rewarding this outlook and incentivising more companies to do the same.

In 2021, we launched our new ISA and Lifetime ISA products which use these same climate-friendly investment funds to give our customers more options to invest more sustainably.

We also believe we have a responsibility ourselves to reduce our own carbon footprint and play our part in preventing climate change. Our Brighton head office supports a ‘no waste goes to landfill’ policy and we have brought in recycling initiatives throughout the building. We comply with the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme where we consider how we’re using energy and look at ways to reduce or offset our usage, including using motion-sensor lighting.