Founded by farmers in 1910, NFU Mutual is the UK’s leading rural insurer and the insurance company of choice for three quarters of UK farmers. NFU Mutual offers a wide range of products, including general insurance, life, pensions, and investments, delivered through a network of NFU Mutual Agent offices, as well as through direct sales and service centres. With almost 300 local businesses located in rural towns and villages throughout the UK, NFU Mutual has become part of the fabric of rural life.

As a mutual, NFU Mutual is proud to deliver more than simply insurance. As well as serving the needs of its 900,000 members nationwide, it is also committed to making farming safer, supporting rural initiatives across the UK and helping to look after the environment. Mutuality is a key differentiator of how it runs its business, with a strong sense of responsibility to customers, stakeholders and wider society for the long-term.

Over its history, strategies may change based on emerging socio-economic issues or new trends, but NFU Mutual’s principles have remained the same for over 100 years. It has devoted its work to “doing the right thing”, which comes naturally as its mutual status enables it to do this across the business. Delivering commercial objectives is still important for NFU Mutual and this sometimes creates a difficult balance, but the organisation always has the customer in front of mind.

“We are not just a mutual – we are NFU Mutual”

As a mutual, NFU Mutual does not operate to maximise profit but rather to sustainably deliver products and services that are valued by members. As a result, the company aims to differentiate itself through the benefits of mutuality and other unique aspects of its business:

• Offer members the valued products and services they need. Don’t offer all products to all customers. Tailored to farming community.
• Develop relationships and understand members’ needs. Customer service, high persistency 95.5% for GI products, high trust, reputation, brand advocacy, compared to market. NFU Mutual sees delivering value as not just “good value for money” but rather that value is everything wrapped around what they offer (such as great customer service, adapting the members’ needs, etc).
• Sustain business for current and future generations of members – network of 300 agencies on high-street. Personal relationships and offering person-to-person interaction and making certain that their employees know their customers. Always been there through flooding, cattle diseases, etc. Meet demands on younger generation (digital capabilities)
• Support local (rural) communities – make a difference to people’s live and measuring how those communities benefit is very valuable (and a USP for any mutual).

ESG as part of the DNA of a responsible, mutual insurer

Considering itself a “responsible business”, NFU Mutual believes that “by doing good” for customers, members and stakeholders, combined with delivering exceptional service, has, in turn, strongly contributed to the organisation’s commercial success.

As a mutual, ESG is part of the DNA of NFU Mutual. Its approach to responsible business is aligned to its corporate strategy and includes an overall vision and targeted outcomes.

NFU Mutual uses an ESG assessment framework to consider its CSR efforts. With this, the company tracks emerging responsible business themes, which are then prioritised to support the delivery of long-term business objectives.

Charitable efforts in the farming community

As part of the very fabric of rural life, NFU Mutual is committed to making positive impacts for its members, for farming and rural communities, and for the environment. This makes up the organisation’s responsible business ambition.

At the start of the pandemic, NFU Mutual launched a GBP 32 million customer support package that included customer payment holidays, adjusting policy coverage, and an increase in community giving (which continued throughout 2020 and 2021). Donations by the NFU Mutual Charitable Trust increased by over 300%, allowing them to raise over GBP 1 million in 2020, reaching all corners of the UK.

A way in which they ensured they were ‘helping where it mattered’ was through their Agency Giving Fund. This was introduced in 2020 and saw donations of another GBP 1 million go to charities that were chosen by local branches all over the UK. In 2021, charitable giving by NFU Mutual increased further to GBP 2 million.

NFU Mutual also works to help the UK’s farming community by supporting the fight against rural crime. Rural crime is an issue that affects a large number of its members. Another instance of their prevent and protect strategy is its Farm Safety Foundation. Over the course of 2021, NFU Mutual delivered farm safety training and education to over 3,000 future farmers through practical demonstrations and campaigns, such as Farm Safety Week. Their campaign ‘Mind Your Head’, addresses the mental challenges that an isolated job, such as farming can face; including stress, time pressures, and suicide.

People make the business

NFU Mutual aim to treat their staff “exceptionally”. It has won a number of recent accolades and being voted number one for graduates in the banking and finance sector. The organisation stayed true to its people-centre values through the pandemic with a number of initiatives to support staff, such as mental health support, continued training opportunities, equipment for home working, as well as not furloughing any its 4,000 peopl workforce.

NFU Mutual were also recently announced as an “Exceptional Workplace” by Gallup recognising its high levels of employee engagement. Its employees’ hard-working attitude can be credited to the care they show and the rewards they present for their hard work – even throughout the pandemic. Employees were rewarded through pay raises and bonuses despite the company struggling in these challenging times of the pandemic.

Effective communication of the mutual message

NFU Mutual is proud to be a mutual and so have a clear narrative to talk about it in its transparent communication strategy.

Sentiment in media (and social media) is usually 99% positive, but this dipped during pandemic (a trend seen much worse across the rest of the insurance industry). Despite dips in the sentiment for public relations, NFU Mutual reported that they gave GBP 253 million back to their members through their Mutual Bonus as a key part of the communications plan, and they received 100% positive mutual sentiment from their rural prime campaign.

On their rural campaign this month, NFU Mutual received 100% positive mutual sentiment. Comprising over 1,200 pieces of media coverage, they received 65% overtly positive sentiment, compared to the industry average of 1% (attracting as much positive sentiment as the big Christmas campaigns by companies such as M&S). This implied that people like the content and like what they are doing as a business; and that the values of NFU Mutual resonates with members and in the communities where it is present.

As part of Mutual Voice Research on its 2021 Responsible Business Report, 61% of participants in their survey claimed that they would be more likely to renew their contracts with NFU Mutual because of the report published in March 2021. This showed NFU Mutual that people care about the business’ morals and care how the business operates. Knowing your customers want to stay with you means a lot for the longevity of your business.

NFU Mutual believes that mutuality remains the differentiator in the industry and believing in own brand and identity is the key to success. The history, legacy and relationships that mutuals have with the community play a pivotal role in their business and its success.