How Lloyds Bank plans to help Britain prosper
Lloyds Banking Group’s Wales ambassador Al Griffiths describes the bank’s new initiative to help Britain prosper
People, businesses and communities across Wales face some significant challenges, which are causing both people and businesses to assess their spending more acutely.
Across our brands, including Lloyds Bank, Black Horse and Halifax, we’re helping people address these challenges as part of our Helping Britain Prosper Plan.
Launched back in 2014, the plan is core to our strategy and supports our aim of being the best bank for customers – whether through committing to support small and mediumsized housebuilders through our Housing Growth Partnership with Government, helping 75,000 firsttime buyers get on the property ladder last year, or helping more than 10,000 business customers trade internationally for the first time.
But we want to go beyond business as usual. We want to help tackle important local social and economic challenges, which is why last year our Welsh colleagues dedicated more than 17,000 volunteer hours to support local community projects, as a part of the Helping Britain Prosper Plan.
Alongside supporting local charities and projects, our Helping Britain
Our StandingOut programme, which sees skilled colleagues filling school governor and Multi Academy Trust Non Exec Director roles to support their chosen school’s development, continues to roll out across Wales. We now have 29 colleagues in local school governor positions, providing expert financial guidance.
We’re also making the most of our own homegrown talent in Wales. Our own apprenticeship programme resulted in 140 permanent local positions being created last year. Opening doors through digital
Our most recent UK Business Digital Index report showed that 45% of small businesses in Wales have no basic digital skills and 61% invest nothing in digital skills. This is a challenge, given that we know how harnessing digital can be transformational for businesses.
Across Wales, we have more than 1,500 digital champions. Our digital champions are specially trained colleagues who are working with small businesses and charities to improve their digital skills.
We’re working with Google and BT to put on dedicated training sessions to help organisations up-skill fast – and for free.
Alongside this, we’ve partnered with the Society of Chief Librarians, to provide IT taster sessions in our local libraries. Our most recent UK Consumer Digital Index report showed that digitally capable people save almost twice as much as those without any digital skills. These sessions help people to improve basic skills to help them make the most of opportunities to manage and save money online. Supporting our business community
Last year, we helped more than 4,500 start-up businesses get off the ground in Wales and provided £53m in new funding to our local manufacturing sector. We also continue to invest £1m every year in our national Lloyds Bank Advanced Manufacturing Centre, which trains apprentices, graduates and engineers to help close the skills gap in this important sector.
Through dedicated funding and support, our digital champions and online resources like our International Trading Portal, we’re working hard to support business growth and enterprise in Wales.