The Cumberland Building Society has won two international awards at the highly renowned Global OPEX Awards, held in Miami.
The awards honour superior 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 has seen continued strong business performance and has progressed the delivery of its growth strategy; a five-year transformation plan focusing on improvements across key areas of the business, all with exceptional customer service at the heart.
Members of The Cumberland’s Operations team made the trip 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, pitted against several global companies including Experian and Gilead at the much-coveted awards, The Cumberland was victorious in the ‘Best Transformation Project Delivering Customer Excellence’ category for the transformation of its lending journey for customers. Over an 18-month period, 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.
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.”
The team also triumphed in the ‘Best Process Transformation Project Under 90 Days’ category for its End-to-End Bereavement Process Review. Identifying an issue with the length of time and complexity involved to register a death of a customer and administer a closure of their account, the team implemented tools and techniques to provide the notifier with a quick and efficient service. With backing from the Senior Leadership Team, a specialist bereavement function was created to handle cases more efficiently, reducing cycle time from 45 days to five days in some cases and significantly improving customer experience.
Pictured in main image: (L-R) Nic Moran, Kerry Charters, Stephen Donne, Leslie Behnke (OPEX Chair)
