Our purpose is Helping Britain Prosper – every day and in life’s key moments. Whether you are supporting family, investing for retirement, accessing finance for businesses to grow, or securing your first home. Last year, we helped around 56,000 first-time buyers to do just that.
And at a time when the cost of living remained a concern for people across the UK – we offered support to 7.5 million customers we knew might need it, and contacted 15 million who may benefit from better savings options.
We are putting more power into the hands of our customers, by undertaking one of the largest digital transformations in our sector – as the biggest digital bank in the UK, with 6 billion log-ons to our mobile app and internet banking last year.
Customers are benefiting from brilliant innovations across our business. For example, we launched ‘Lloyds Bank 360’ as a one-stop-shop for wealth, financial education and coaching. While our ‘Ready Made Investments’ are making it much easier to invest – and over half of these customers are under the age of 35.
We want to support a sustainable, inclusive future for people and businesses and, having exceeded our £15 billion target in transition financing for businesses ahead of plan – we’ve set a new target of £30 billion between 2024 and 2026. And following last year’s acquisition of Tusker, we now finance 1 in 8 ultra-low emission vehicles on UK roads.
Good homes are the foundation for strong communities, and we are the biggest supporters of social housing in the UK, with £2.7 billion in funding in 2023 – of which £1.4 billion was for sustainability-linked builds and retrofit. That’s over £17 billion in financing since 2018. But there is much more to be done. I’m proud of the partnership we launched last April with the charity Crisis – calling for “1 million more homes at social rent within the next 10 years”.
Thank you to my colleagues across the business who have been such a brilliant support to Crisis. Thank you to all the teams who support housing, infrastructure and community development, and to everyone who is working hard to support people and businesses across the UK.
Thank you for everything you are doing in Helping Britain Prosper.
