Swansea Building Society celebrates online success story

Swansea Building Society has hailed its investment in developing a new digital service that allows customers to access their savings and mortgage accounts online a success after one thousand seven hundred customers signed up to use its online banking portal in the first four months.

Swansea Online was launched in July following a significant period of research and development by the 97-year old institution, which wanted to strike the right balance between allowing customers easy access to their accounts, especially during lockdown, while offering security, assurance and choice.

The Society has welcomed high levels of adoption of the new platform in the first four months since rollout. While partly driven by COVID-19-related restrictions, the Society has kept all of its four branches open and operating throughout the Coronavirus crisis, while following guidelines around social distancing, to ensure customers have the choice they need – while also supporting the High Street.

Swansea Online allows the Society’s customers to view their savings and mortgage account balances online, transfer between Society savings accounts and withdraw monies from their Society savings account(s) to a nominated bank account which must be in their name/joint names (subject to terms and conditions).

Customers can also view previous transactions on savings and mortgage accounts and directly contact the Society’s highly-trained experts and advisors using a secure messaging facility.

The online platform has been set up with security and online safety as a priority. It will be accessible from any device including smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers.

The Society stressed that this is not a replacement for its personal, face-to-face service, but simply an additional avenue for customers to engage with its staff and products and an especially helpful one in the context of social distancing measures, which remain in place post lockdown.

Alun Williams, Chief Executive of Swansea Building Society, said:

“We have been delighted by the way in which our customers have embraced Swansea Online and we look forward to encouraging even more members to use it in the future while adding to its functionality. The important thing for us is customer choice. We kept all our branches open during the pandemic, ensuring all our customers could access their savings and mortgages in a way that works for them.

“Our priority has always been to ensure our members are comfortable with the security of the platform but also still have access to the personal service we have always cherished and built our business around. Whether a customer decides to deal with us in person at a branch office, by telephone, by post or online, the service they receive will be the same – friendly, informed, personal, professional and welcoming.”