Our customers

We want to build a great organisation, which is recognised for operating to high standards and is built on strong customer franchises. Our ultimate goal is to become Britain’s most recommended bank. We have put in place the essential building blocks; providing excellent customer service from well-trained staff; appropriate products that meet real needs; treating customers fairly at all times; and following ethical business practices to build a sustainable, profitable business.

Responsible lending

We are committed to being a responsible lender. It is in our interest to help customers borrow only those amounts they can manage to repay. We have a responsible lending programme with internal management reporting and accountability. Our employees are trained to offer the necessary advice and support to help customers manage their borrowing. Our Customer Support Unit provides help for customers who are in financial difficulties to find an appropriate solution through effective budgeting or rescheduling their borrowing. We also support independent money advice networks including the Money Advice Trust and the Consumer Credit Counselling Service. Payments totalling more than £3.4 million were made in 2007.

Combating financial crime

We take protecting our customers and their assets extremely seriously and continue to invest in systems and activities to deter, detect and prevent fraud. These include transaction monitoring tools to identify suspicious account activity and the introduction of verification technology on our counters to secure withdrawals. We also work to ensure customers are aware of how to protect themselves including dedicating a section of our website to information on common internet fraud types and an annual campaign to raise awareness of the threat of identity theft.

Financial inclusion

We continue to develop financial services especially tailored to tackle the problem of financial exclusion. These include basic bank accounts, support for community credit unions and other community finance initiatives and, loan and venture capital funds, which offer loans to individuals and businesses in some of the most deprived areas in the UK. Lloyds TSB currently has £14 million invested in the community finance sector in addition to its normal commercial lending to small businesses in these areas. Our alliance with the Post Office allows our customers access to the UK network of post offices as well as over 2,000 of our own branches and over 4,100 free ATMs. At the end of 2007 we had over 470,000 basic bank accounts.

Lloyds TSB welcomes and fully supports the Financial Services Authority’s initiatives to increase Financial Capability in the UK. We have seconded a Senior Executive to develop, launch and manage the financial capability in the workplace workstream of the FSA Strategy. Since launching 18 months ago, the team have provided educational material and training to over 1.2 million employees throughout the UK, and are well on track to reach the target of 4 million, by 2011. Feedback from all parties has been very encouraging and is improving these employees’ financial capability.

Customer satisfaction

We measure our customers’ satisfaction with the service they receive via monthly surveys and use the results to calculate our CARE Index which is based on customer understanding, accessibility, responsibility and expertise. We seek to address customer complaints as quickly as prudent while ensuring appropriate standards of investigation and communication are maintained.

From 2008 we will be introducing a new measure of customer advocacy, the Net Promoter Score, which measures the likelihood of customers recommending Lloyds TSB to friends, family and colleagues.

In a poll of finance directors across the UK, Lloyds TSB Corporate was voted ‘Bank of the Year’ for the third year running at the Real Finance/CBI FDs’ Excellence Awards, in recognition of our quality of service and understanding of our customers’ businesses. Lloyds TSB was also voted the Reader’s Digest most trusted bank or building society for the seventh successive year in 2007.