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- Winter view of Silsden, West Yorkshire, home to Ecology’s eco-HQ
When you’re a financial institution that aims to change the world, there’s no such thing as business as usual, and there’s certainly never a quiet year. But it’s fair to say that 2012 has exceeded all of our expectations, so as the year draws to a close, it’s a good time to recap some of the highlights.
In January we launched our brand new website, including this blog, our collection of member stories, and our revamped resource hub. The reception was fantastic and we were proud to have a web presence that reflected the passion and liveliness of our team and our work. We were even shortlisted for a Yorkshire Insider Digital Award!
Our online progress continued in February, when we launched our e-newsletter. We wanted to keep members and non-members updated on our work and interesting developments in the green building and ethical finance sectors, and we’ve seen subscriber numbers climb every edition. If you you’re not a subscriber, why not sign up today?
March was one of our busiest months, as we launched our Shrink This campaign to encourage homeowners to improve the energy efficiency of their properties. The campaign aimed to promote our C-Change Retrofit scheme, which offers a discount on our Standard Variable Rate (currently 4.90% – the overall cost for comparison is 4.9% APR) for every grade improvement you make in your home’s Energy Performance Certificate.
We also announced our new partnership with Parity Projects, who offer independent, individual home energy assessments – the first of our partnerships to promote retrofit. Later in the year, we also teamed with The Energy Saving Co-operative to offer a mutual, ethical alternative to the Government’s Green Deal.
As ISA season reached its height in April, the buzz generated by the Move Your Money campaign started to have a real impact, especially on our Twitter and Facebook feeds. It was fantastic to see more and more people calling for an ethical approach to finance – and putting their money where their mouths were!
We were also seeing an increasing buzz around self-build, or ‘custom build’ as the government likes to call it, and in May our Chief Executive Paul Ellis joined a delegation including Grant Shapps and Kevin McCloud to Europe’s largest self-build development in Almere, Holland.
June and July really were phenomenal months for us. As the crises of LIBOR fixing and mis-selling of hedge fund products hit the headlines, ethical alternatives finally took the spotlight, and we reached millions of people through coverage in the national press, on the radio and even on TV! The timing couldn’t have been more significant, as August marked five years since the start of the credit crunch.
September brought more media coverage as we released our excellent interim results, showing that green really is good for growth. At the end of the month we hosted an international delegation of leaders in ethical finance as part of our membership of INAISE, the International Association of Investors in the Social Economy. It wasn’t all work – we made sure they experienced a little bit of Yorkshire hospitality and the stunning scenery around our headquarters in Silsden!
National Ethical Investment Week in October is always special for us, but this year was extra special, as we announced that our savings balances had passed £100m for the first time. There could be little better evidence of a widespread shift towards sustainable, socially useful models of finance.
November brought an accolade of a different kind: we won Silver at the International Green Awards, a global awards scheme that recognises the best of the best in sustainable business. The judges of our WWF Green Game Changer award saw the potential of C-Change Retrofit to inspire others and drive the transition to a more sustainable future.
Now December is upon us, we’re planning for a very busy 2013, in which we want to help even more people live sustainably and save ethically. If you’re already a member, thank you for helping us achieve everything we did in 2012. And if you’ve not yet joined us, why not make 2013 the year you become part of a very different way to do finance?
Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage. An early repayment charge may be payable if you repay all or part of your mortgage within the first four years.