Our mutuality
Being a mutual allows us to focus on the long term for the benefit of our customers and their families. We generate value for members, customers and wider society, not shareholders.
We're proud to say we have over two million members, and our mutuality remains as relevant to us now as when we were first established.
Founded to help people help themselves, we remain committed to working for you and your employees to make a positive change in the world we live in.
What does it mean to be a mutual?
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Hello, I’m Barry O’Dwyer, Group Chief Executive Officer at Royal London.
Royal London is the largest mutual life, pensions and investment company in the UK. I am proud we are customer-owned. That includes employees who are enrolled into our workplace pension schemes.
But what are the benefits of mutuality?
For us, it means we are focused on meeting our customers’ long-term needs. Whether by developing services to help customers build their financial resilience through free-to-access articles, guides, tools, and calculators or by empowering you, their employer, by giving you access to personalised reports and ready-to-go communications to engage your employees – we focus on what really matters to you and your employees.
Our members can have their say in how our business is run at our Annual General Meeting. And, when we do well, eligible customers receive a share of our profits, this is what we call ProfitShare. While we cannot guarantee to pay ProfitShare every year, since 2007, when ProfitShare was introduced, we have shared over £1.7 billion with eligible customers.
We also aim to have a positive impact on society through our social impact work and partnerships to help people build financial resilience and play our part in moving fairly to a sustainable world. For the past three years we have been proud to commit over 1% of our operating profits to further our social impact activity, providing financial support to vulnerable people in society and investing in social enterprises. And, through our partnership with Cancer Research UK, we are helping to tackle cancer inequalities and supporting research into hard-to-treat cancers.
We’re clear on the positive difference we want to make for our customers, businesses, and wider society. As part of this, we’re committed to acting and investing responsibly. Our approach to responsible investing focuses on: engaging with companies we invest in, using our voting rights on a range of issues, making sure that environmental, social and governance factors are considered in the investment decision-making process, and collaborating with policymakers, the companies we invest in and industry groups on key issues. All the investment options in our Governed Range, where most employees are invested, incorporate this responsible investment approach.
And, we’re committed to working for you and your employees, guided by our Purpose – Protecting today, investing in tomorrow. Together we are mutually responsible.
Thank you.