Founded in 1861, Royal London is the largest mutual life and pensions company in the UK offering life, pensions, retirement and investment products. The value of mutuality has become increasingly important for Royal London as the number of mutuals in the sector has contracted over recent years. In 2020, the company undertook a review of its purpose and strategy and concluded this towards the turn of the year. The focus in 2021 moved on to putting that into practice, both in terms of supporting its customers in a variety of ways as the world emerges from the pandemic and embedding a solid strategy for Royal London to play its part in tackling climate change.
Royal London believes people working for a purpose-driven company are likely to be more engaged and productive. So, to that end, and driven by Royal London’s CEO, a large number of employees were invited to participate in the organisations’ new strategy and purpose work by giving them a voice. One way they did this was through ‘purpose cafés’ ie workshops in physical areas around the office where employees could collaborate. Royal London believed this was a clear way of creating a company-wide driven approach. It was clear that whilst the organisation always strived to have a purpose, employees would previously have different ways of describing it, so achieving a singular version was fundamentally important. This resulted in a new purpose: ‘Protecting today, investing in tomorrow. Together, we are mutually responsible’.
Royal London wants to demonstrate that it is a modern mutual, and to grow sustainably while putting its customers and clients at the heart of what it does by deepening customer relationships with all stakeholders. Royal London wants to be purpose-driven, first and foremost, while also being data-led and nimble in the digital space. At Royal London, people have a strong customer focus and want to develop broader solutions not just in terms of the products offered but also the services offered. This includes guidance and advice and even emotional support for people in times of hardship. Royal London’s mutual values also mean it works in a constructive and collaborative way with politicians, policymakers and regulators to ensure policy direction is in the best interests of its customers.
Putting its purpose into action by focusing on ‘mutuality for good’, the area where Royal London feels it can make a difference is through helping building financial resilience. Within financial resilience, they’re focusing in particular on protecting customers’ personal finances today, but also thinking about how customers invest for the future by offering guidance and advice, which in the UK market is often overlooked.
The second element of its purpose is ‘moving fairly to a sustainable world.’ Like a growing number of organisations, Royal London is committed to a ‘just transition’ to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Its aim is to achieve this in a sustainable way by helping people along the journey, for example where financial challenges may arise when the need may come to replace household appliances to more sustainable models that cost money, and are supplied by companies which Royal London invests in.
Bringing the purpose to life
Mutuality enables Royal London to drive change in the areas that it can influence by embedding its purpose across every area of the business. This drives change and enables people to understand each of these purpose areas and how its work contributes to that. The mutual launched a refresh brand strategy called ‘It’s everyone’s business’, changing its visual identity with a new photographic library to convey a modern mutual.
This was brought together in a campaign called ‘Together for good’, a campaign to protect the standards of living for this and future generations that aligns to being mutually responsible, helping Royal London tell a story through its brand work and all of its activities around the mutual’s role in society with a long-term aim to show customers how they are making change.
This case study was featured in the ICMIF report Leveraging the mutual difference (published February 2022).
Click here to access the report.
Another active change has been Royal London’s sponsorship strategy in 2021, which focussed on levelling the playing field and tackling equality in sport. Royal London has partnered with the ACE Programme charity which aims to address a 75% decline in cricket participation by members of the black community. Royal London’s partnership supports the expansion of the ACE programme into Bristol.
It is also a Principal Partner of the Women’s Lions Programme together with the British & Irish Lions and is launching a study that will consider whether a women’s Lions team could be established.
Another campaign is focussed on tackling the taboo around death. The digital exhibition ‘Lost for Words’ features influencers and celebrities sharing stories of grief, while the ‘How to Die Well’ book provides practical support and guidance for people dealing with death and loss.
Social impact has always been at the heart of Royal London’s ethos so it looked at the issue of financial resilience around everything from that moment of crisis to prevention to innovation, and then building a programme of work around it. The company have been working with Turn2us a leading UK poverty charity with a remit around support for accessing grants and benefits at that moment of financial challenge, with around 11 million people accessing it on an annual basis to find information. That is Royal London’s way of tackling and protecting today. They also have a social innovation programme Changemakers, working with social enterprises to consider new ideas around financial resilience issues.
This case study is taken from the webinar Putting a purpose driven strategy into practice.
About Royal London
Royal London is the UK’s largest mutual life, pensions and investment company, providing pensions, protection and wealth management products and services in the UK, and protection products in Ireland. With around 4,000 staff and approximately GBP 150 billion assets under management, it is one of the world’s largest mutuals.
Royal London strongly believes in the benefits of mutuality. Its strategy is built around being an insight-led modern mutual, focused on growing sustainably by deepening customer relationships. As a purpose-driven organisation, it is uniquely positioned to put the needs of its customers above all else and take a long-term approach despite the short-term uncertainties.
As a mutual, it can use its profits to invest in the things it believes benefit its customers most, as well as enhancing returns on eligible life and pensions policies, through ProfitShare - which has added more than GBP 1.2 billion to the value of eligible customers’ savings since 2007.
