Weekly Update - 10 December 2007

Branch of the Week!
Top performing branch this week against target was Cheetham Hill - Well Done! - To Mr Khan and his team.

Branch of the Year ( YTD )
Top performing branch Year to date remains Upper Chorlton Road - Well to Ashok and his team!

Can anyone take the Team4107 shield away from Ashok and the Team at Upper Chorlton Road?!

Week 37 was another great week for -
Car Insurance
Special Delivery
Travel Insurance
Travel Money

All were well over 100%

However, performance in -
Banking
Credit Card
in particular was disappointing

This is our key time for Banking in the run up to Christmas. We need to make every effort to close the gap. Year to date we are some 5,929 transactions short of where we need to be and the targets will continue to ramp up over the coming weeks.

Please make every effort to ensure that you and all your team are asking all customers as to whether

- "Did you know that you can pay by Debit Card?"
- "Would you like to pay by Debit Card?"

Only by asking these simple questions are we likely to see more Partner Bank Cards and therefore in a position for a further cross-sell opportunity of offering cash-out to our customers. This is good customer service and is a service that many of customers are still not unaware that they can undertake at your branch.

Credit Card
Looking ahead please make sure that you and all your teams are fully aware of our Credit Card product. The vast majority of credit card applications are submitted in the final quarter of the year. Customers likely to be interested in this great product really fall into two specific groups.

- Those that are going on holiday. For those customers they are likely to be interested and will consider applying for our Credit Card based on our market leading facility of 0% foreign exchange charges

- Those looking to reduce their costs by transferring their balance to a cheaper card. For those customers our card is very well positioned in relation to the competition.

Make sure that you and your staff are familiar with the features of the product. Start practising the types of conversations that you will need to be having with your customers. If you are not familiar with the product or are not confident with the conversations then you will struggle to convince your customers to complete an application

Best Practise Tip of the Week
One of the Top performing Commercial branches for Credit Card sales is Pendlebury which is a Manchester Branch. There is nothing particularly inspiring about the area or the customers. Whats make this branch different is the approach of the Subpostmaster. He targets the two customer groups and highlights the features of the card. The clever "bit" is that he says to customers "Would you like me to order you one ?". Customers seem to like this approach and this shows through in his Credit Cards sales. Year to date he has achieved 304 applications and out of these he has managed 130 sales.This equates to a conversion rate of 42.7%. Well above the business / Industry average.

Why not give this approach a go and let me know how you get on - Good Luck!

Whilst as a business we have an impress conversion rate for Credit Card applications to sales. We are not so good with actual Customer contact. What that means is that many applications fail to reach actual issue as customers are failing to respond to application queries. To over come this it is imperative that we make sure that any applications completed in branch are fully and accurately completed. The two main problem areas seems to Bank & Employment details not being filled in or only partially filled in. Please make sure that all completed application forms are fully completed. In doing so we should start to see an improved conversion rate. It would be a real shame if you fail to receive any payment as an application has been submitted incomplete or incorrect application and the customer then fails to respond to queries from the Bank Ireland.

Start thinking about what Credit Card Sales activity you would like to undertake in your branch post Christmas. I will be happy to discuss this with you and to offer support on specific sales days.

Have a great week I know it will be a busy week but we must keep the focus on sales and good customer Service through product awareness.

Good Luck!
John