Former Lloyds Banking Group chief of staff Janet Pope joins Yorkshire Building Society board
A recently-retired Lloyds Banking Group executive is joining the board of Yorkshire Building Society.
Janet Pope is to become a non-executive director at YBS from October 29.
She recently retired from Lloyds Banking Group, where she was Chief of Staff and Chief Sustainability Officer. In that role she had a particular focus on sustainability, responsible business, inclusion and diversity. Her previous roles at Lloyds included Savings Director and Investment and Protection Director.
She has previously been CEO at Alliance Trust Savings, Executive Vice President, Global Strategy at Visa International and Head of Retail Banking Africa at Standard Chartered.
With more than 30 years’ experience in financial services, Ms Pope currently sits on the Board of the Leeds-based debt charity StepChange and is also chair of the Charities Aid Foundation Bank.
She has also been a member of the Board at Alliance Trust and the Banking Standards Board.
She said: “I’m looking forward to joining the Board at Yorkshire Building Society, an organisation which has a strong social purpose and is committed to delivering long-term value for its members and communities.
“I intend to use my experience to support the Society as it grows and continues to help people find a place to call home and deliver value for savers.”
Annemarie Durbin, chair of Yorkshire Building Society, said: “Janet has considerable experience in financial services, both in executive and non-executive positions.
"She has held board positions on a range of public, private and charity organisations and the Society and our members will benefit from the insight she brings.”
Ms Durbin herself became YBS’s first female chair in May having previously held a series of senior roles at Standard Chartered and sat on the boards of Santander and WHSmith.
She recently told The Yorkshire Post that she wants the board to focus on increasing “member value”.
“We’ve always been good at giving differential rates to savers but we want to make that much more holistically meaningful,” she said.
“I want to really define making membership meaningful through life stages, really demonstrate customers and members have joyful experiences and that through the life stages of members and customers we are there to support them.
“Since six customers at the start in 1864 it now has nearly three million members. We have worked really hard to serve more customers and want to continue to do that.”
It comes as YBS published new research calculating that the UK population could have earned an additional £94 billion last year, or an extra £547 each, had savings been held with them instead of a high street bank.
The mutual said it paid an average savings rate of 3.43 per cent over 2023, 41 per cent higher than the market average.
Tom Simpson, interim chief commercial officer at Yorkshire Building Society, said: “We’re determined to continue to do what is best for our customers so they stay with us and we’re always working hard to show people the benefits of being with a building society.”