Content area
Full text
How Abbey is managing communication around the high-profile rebrand
Earlier this year, Santander, the Spanish banking group announced that three UK high street banks, including previously acquired Abbey, would be renamed Santander by the end of 2010. The group acquired Alliance & Leicester (A&L) and Bradford & Bingley (B&B) savings in a very short space of time. Here's how the companies' communication teams, led by Anthony Frost, Head of Corporate Communications, ensured employees were kept informed and engaged throughout the changes.
When Santander acquired Abbey in 2004, they did so with the intention of transforming the business. In the two years prior, Abbey posted losses totaling f 1.5billion. No mean feat at a time when it was quite difficult for banks to lose money. Santander's approach to transforming Abbey was based on a change in processes, the introduction of a new IT platform (Partenon) and moving the focus of the business from a mortgage and savings bank to a full-service commercial bank offering current accounts, credit cards, insurance, investments and business and corporate banking. Santander is also a results- driven bank and, over time, Abbey's culture has changed to reflect this.
The following three years presented staff with many highs and lows. Staff numbers went from 24,000 to 16,000, 23 IT systems were rolled into one, every sales process in the branch was changed and staff faced some tough times. On the positive side, the changes started to deliver results as the product range was broadened with better value for-money products and through 2007 and 2008, Abbey was back with market-leading products and featuring in best-buy tables.
The financial performance improved significantly over this period with Abbey's profit going from £16 million in 2004 to £lbillion in 2008.
In September 2007, the collapse of Northern Rock created difficult times for banks, in some cases a little more difficult than others. Indeed in the last two years, some have disappeared as others emerged as winners. What the winning banks have in common is that they're well managed, diversified and have continued to focus on their core activities. And it was these core messages we communicated strongly to Abbey staff as Santander and Abbey, with no exposure to sub -prime loans, came through the credit...