Like you, I wear many hats. I’m a son, a husband, and very proud dad. I’m a customer, a consumer, and a business leader. I’m saving for a family holiday and also for retirement. We all wear so many hats and it can be a challenge to keep them all in balance.

Our business wears a lot of hats, too: we’re a start-up, a challenger, and a small, cohesive team supporting a large, conservative lending business. In amongst all of this variety is one constant. First and foremost, whatever the role, behaviour, or product, I think it’s important that everything we do at RCI Bank is centred on our savers.

A recent example of this was the dialogue I had with someone who wanted to become an RCI Bank customer, but whose living arrangements precluded her from applying through the usual avenues. Living on her houseboat, she has the flexibility to navigate around the UK’s waterways as she pleases, and loves the freedom that affords. Unfortunately, your typical banking provider isn’t so agile and having no fixed address was proving something of a problem when trying to open a savings account.

Luckily for her, RCI Bank isn’t your typical provider. Instead of telling her to cast off for pastures new, we worked to create a solution that would enable her to save with us even as she moved from port to port around Britain; it’s been smooth sailing ever since thanks to the team’s focus on wearing the customer hat.

In practice, taking our savers into account means creating simple products and an intuitive online journey. It’s in the open dialogue we maintain with our customers, and the way we do business – for example, passing on all rate changes to existing as well as new customers so everyone who saves with us feels the benefit of fair finance. In fact, in our first year of business we boosted easy access rates across the market by nearly a fifth (18%) for UK savers¹, showing the positive impact we’ve had on the whole savings market – even those who don’t save with us. This differentiates us from less agile providers, and is the reason our savers are happy to call RCI Bank home.

Simply put, our customers are always our priority. We don’t have just one or two customer heads in the business; instead, everyone wears the customer hat.

I’m proud to work somewhere that represents the changes we want to see in the banking industry, and one that receives regular calls from our savers to let us know that we’re unique in the best way. Everyone who works here flies the RCI Bank flag, and by maintaining the transparency and conversation with our customers that we’ve established since launch, we can continue to grow together.

¹ Source: Savings Champion 16 May 2016