The Cumberland Building Society has won two international awards.
The Global OPEX Awards, honour operational excellence and business transformation, reflecting significant investment from the Carlisle-based company to transform its processes, especially operationally, to ensure the best customer service.
Despite the challenges of the pandemic, The Cumberland said it has seen continued strong business performance and continues to deliver its five-year transformation plan, focusing on improvements across key areas of the business.
Members of The Cumberland’s operations team went to Miami to pitch against some of the world’s biggest companies as part of the OPEX Week: Business Transformation World Summit.
The Cumberland, which has a 171-year history and is the 10th largest building society within the UK, was up against several global companies including Experian and Gilead at the awards.
The Cumberland was victorious in the Best Transformation Project Delivering Customer Excellence category for the transformation of its lending journey for customers and the Best Process Transformation Project Under 90 Days’category for its end-to-end bereavement process review.
Over 18 months, the organisation created a cross functional team with colleagues from its operations and distribution function to review and improve the mortgage application process from beginning to end.
The team carried out multiple improvements, reducing the cycle time from initial mortgage interview to sending out an offer from 76 days to 12 days, and has since extended the process across other parts of the business.
As part of the project, 41 staff achieved various grades of the Lean Six Sigma qualifications, which focus on improving processes within the business and therefore service and value for customers.
It has created a specialist bereavement function to handle cases more efficiently, reducing cycle time from 45 days to five days in some cases and significantly improving customer experience.
Stephen Donne, head of operations at The Cumberland, said: “To win not one but two global awards is a huge accomplishment and I’m so proud of the team. Thank you to everyone involved – to be recognised in this way is simply amazing.”
“We’re now heading into the third year of our Cumberland 2025 Transformation programme, with the first two years seeing us invest in both people and processes, ensuring they are transformed to deliver the best customer outcomes.
“We’ve focused our efforts on the operations and distributions teams, areas of the business where manual processes caused long delays, impacting our customer experience. This has involved a deep change in culture and new ways of working, which is helping us evolve into a vibrant financial services brand.
“To be recognised on a global stage shows the impact that the programme is already having on the business. This work is allowing us to begin paving the way for the next phase, which will see our business digitise, so this is just the start of the improvements we’ll be putting in place for our customers.”
Susanne Parry, chief operating officer at The Cumberland, added: “It was an honour to be judged for this award by renowned customer service expert, Steve Towers, who commended our customer-centric approach to our business. Giving our customers the best experience starts with investing in our people; giving them the skills to identify problem areas and empowering them to make changes.
“We aim to offer the best customer service, not just in the financial services sector, but in any industry in the UK. Despite facing unprecedented times over the past two years, maintaining our focus on quality and excellence has been appreciated by our employees, and these investments will ensure we are set up not only for today, but for years to come.”
