This week our Marketing Manager, Lucy Mackins shares her thoughts on the impact the pandemic has had on events and the way in which the industry has adapted. This time last year, we were putting together the final pieces of our 2020 events calendar, with preparations well underway for some of the industry’s key events, such as the BIBA conference amongst others. 12 months later we're reflecting on how the pandemic has forced us to rethink & adapt our approach. In the initial months, events were cancelled, with some organisers rescheduling in the hope that they could take place later in the year, but as the months progressed it became evident that the situation was not changing anytime soon.

Earlier this year we were invited, among other major brands in Europe, to participate in an initiative run by University of Oxford Said Business School (UK) and Berkeley (US) called ‘Enacting Purpose’. The output of this work was then published online in late August. This report defined Purpose as being the key driver for sustainable profitable growth for businesses. Like many organisations we’ve set mission statements – the What, values – How our organisation behaves, a vision – the Where we have impact; but we had not worked out our North Star (Purpose), the Why, which frames our actions and helps us head towards a more sustainable and profitable future.

A recurrent theme over this series has been developing strong, close relationships with our network partners and their members, as well as being their trusted advisor who can enable them to achieve their goals. This begs the question; how can we really help? How do we identify potential areas of concern and then recommend the appropriate course of action that benefits network partners, their members and the end customer?

Raising funding at favourable terms is key for Premium Credit so you can present your customers with attractive instalment payment options. How do we do it? Premium Credit is not a bank, which means we are not allowed to fund ourselves through customer deposits. Instead, since 2012 we raise a large portion of our funding through a technique called securitisation. This consists in pooling together a number of customer loans into bonds, which are then traded on the stock exchange. These bonds are then bought by pension funds, insurance companies and banks as an investment.

Our Head of Marketing, Forbes Campbell, is committed to understanding our broker partners’ operating rhythms, the ways in which they engage their customers and to really get under the skin of any challenges that they encounter offering and understanding finance. With a focus on providing relevant and useful content to our partners, the marketing team face three interconnected challenges.

A couple of weeks ago I shared my views on the ease of access, we now enjoy as consumers, to our personal credit score. However, access is just one element – what if you’d like to maintain or increase your score over time? Here are some key things you need to know and the actions you may wish to take.