150 jobs created by Leeds financial institution

LEEDS BUILDING SOCIETY is planning on creating 150 jobs in the next year.

Following its results announcement, which showed a fifth consecutive record year for the business, chief executive of Leeds Building Society Peter Hill said they had plans to grow the business even further this year.

He said: “The thing that I’m most proud of is that we have a great business that is growing and creating jobs. We have created 400 jobs over the past five years.

“We have 150 jobs in the pipeline for 2016 and with three offices in Leeds as well as branches, we have seen lots of new faces joining the business, and provide good interesting jobs in things like underwriting risk and marketing.

Looking to the future, Mr Hill said that Leeds Building Society will be keeping an eye on the wider markets.

He said: “The domestic market looks pretty good, we’ve got some uncertainty because of the referendum. But we’re used to that, we had the same uncertainty regarding the Election last year.

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“It is a decision that will have an impact that will have impact over many years, but customers will always want somewhere safe to put their savings and a mortgage to have roof over heads. Ideally we would like as little instability as possible.

“But domestically it is looking good, and we have every reason to be confident, with the mortgage market growing.

“It is still competitive, we’ve got new entrants coming in to our market. Thankfully we’re a success story in terms of strong growth. We basically get up every morning and stay ahead of the competition, thinking about how we can innovate.”

Coming up with new products is a luxury the mid-sized financial institution uses to its advantage.

“If we come up with new ideas, it’s about identifying where we have customers and can do better for them. The size we are, we can do things a bit different than a massive business. We can tailor our propositions, such as the Welcome mortgage, with 0% interest to start with, we can find the right solution for the right customer.”

Investing in digital proposition has been a key factor in Leeds Building Society’s growth, with the launch of a mobile app, as well as a big investment in core, behind-the-scenes systems.

Mr Hill finished: “2016 will another year where growth is important to us, where we continue to get out there and compete, and we have a lot more product development lined up.”

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