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OneFamily AGM 2025 - celebrating our 50th year

August 2025

We’re a member-owned organisation and we want our members to have their say on how we run our business.

Our Annual General Meeting (AGM) is a great opportunity for our members to hear about our business updates and ask questions.

Celebrating 50 years of OneFamily

This year’s AGM, which took place on 12 June 2025, marked our 50th anniversary year.

Our members were greeted by music from the 1970s as they arrived, followed by OneFamily Chair, Steve Colsell, kicking off with a look back at 2024.

Describing it as a year of change and uncertainty, Steve highlighted the invaluable role mutuals, like OneFamily, play in driving growth across the UK.

Jim Islam, OneFamily CEO, followed by reminiscing about the early days of OneFamily. You can hear more about the beginning of our story, and how we're pushing the boundaries to inspire better futures, in the video below.

View Video Transcript

Now I'm going to take you back in time to 1975.

Bear with me on this. You might have heard some of the music as you arrived earlier.

So we are heading back to the days of flares, long hair, and bands like the Bay City Rollers, Queen and Brighton Eurovision winners, ABBA.

Yes, this was the year that saw the beginnings of the OneFamily story, which started its life in a one-room London office before moving to our sunny seaside home of Brighton in 1983.

We have been owned by our customers and actively growing their financial wellbeing for 50 years this year and it's quite a milestone - and one that we are extremely proud of.

So, we've been digging around in dusty old photos and yellowed newspaper cuttings to find out a bit more about our early days.

And do you know what we found? In our archive of documents we discovered that OneFamily was set up with the intention of creating a new and dynamic friendly society, which is remarkably close to how we describe ourselves today.

We are still dynamic, and from these small beginnings we have grown to become one of the UK's most exciting and ambitious modern mutuals.

Forever pushing the boundaries of what's possible to inspire better futures for our members.

Growth and transformation

Jim updated our members on our plans to grow and modernise our business, focusing on moving forward and cementing our place as the leading mutual in the UK.

He emphasised that supporting our members has remained at the heart of what we do. This is reflected in our excellent Trustpilot score (4.4 as at July 2025) and our customer satisfaction rating of 93% (Source: Bright survey, 2024).

"Keep calm and stay invested"

Next up OneFamily Chief Finance Officer, Philippa Herz, gave a financial update, including running through our 2024 financial performance highlights.

Members of State Street, our investment fund manager then provided insights into investing, as well as a useful reminder to "keep calm and stay invested" in turbulent markets.

Inspiring Better Futures

OneFamily Distribution Director, Holly Ewing, spoke about our mission to inspire better futures.

Supporting our members and customers, investing in our colleagues and giving back to our communities is a core part of our mutual ethos.

You can watch Holly talking about how we’ve been putting this into action in the video below.

View Video Transcript

Good afternoon everyone. I'm Holly Ewing, Distribution Director, and it's a pleasure to be here with all of you.

Today I want to share how together we're not just offering financial products, but actively inspiring better futures for individuals and communities across the UK.

At the heart of OneFamily and Beagle Street lies a mutual ethos. We're owned by our members, for our members. This means our profits are reinvested to benefit you, not external shareholders.

Our Inspiring Better Futures vision is built on three key pillars.

Firstly, members and customers. Providing accessible, affordable financial products tailored to real life needs.

Secondly, colleagues. Fostering an inclusive environment where everyone can thrive.

And lastly, communities. Giving back through volunteering, charity partnerships, and initiatives that make a tangible difference.

This vision isn't just corporate jargon. It's a commitment we live by daily.

Let me illustrate how this vision translates into action:

Financial accessibility

We continue to design products with low minimum investment levels, making saving for the future more achievable for people regardless of income or background.

Sustainable investments

Through our climate focused funds, we're backing companies working to reduce environmental harm, aligning long-term growth with long-term responsibility.

Beagle Street, now part of the OneFamily Group, embodies our commitment to reaching underserved markets.

By simplifying life insurance and making it more affordable, we're connecting with individuals who have long felt excluded from financial protection.

And with Beagle Street now directly underwriting policies, we've aligned the agility to respond faster, and more personally, to our customers’ needs.

One example of that care: by signing up to the Protection Distributors Group Funeral Payment Pledge we are ensuring that bereaved families receive a £5,000 advance to help cover funeral costs. Easing the burden at a deeply emotional time.

As we look to the future, it’s vital we also look out for those most at risk of being left behind.

That includes customers with diminished mental capacity whose vulnerability can too often mean exclusion from mainstream financial services.

At OneFamily, we're going beyond product thresholds to ensure these savers receive the dignity and the protection that they deserve.

In 2024, we trained more colleagues to identify and support vulnerable individuals, improved how we communicate with carers and attorneys, and enhanced our systems to flag customers that may need that extra care.

We're also active in industry conversations about building better safeguards and accessibility, because financial confidence shouldn't disappear when capacity changes.

Everyone deserves a future that they can rely on.

Looking towards the future

As well as reflecting on the past 50 years, a key theme running through the speeches was looking forward.

This was summarised by Jim Islam at the end of his speech:

"We are ready to take mutuality to the next level.

"To be at the forefront of a shift in the financial services landscape that will see inclusion and trust being a priority once more. And I can't wait."

Jim Islam, OneFamily CEO

You can find out more about our AGM, and sign up to receive notice of our future AGMs on our Annual General Meeting page.