Transcription
[Music] There's a range of factors that contributed to the success this year. Obviously, it's been a very challenging year for for everybody, and to maintain the level of personal service that we have done has has has been a great testament to the people within the business and the continuity within the business as well.
We've launched a number of initiatives this year, um, as well as maintaining our personal contact and level of service with clients. We've we've launched things like our, um, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and also been very focused on fighting fraud as well, which has been an increasing issue for for for clients.
We've tried very much to keep, um, engaged with our clients throughout, particularly when we've not been able to travel to see them as as much. So we've run various different seminars and indeed we had our Forward Creating the Future conference, uh, earlier this year, which was a great success, and we've had some marvelous feedback from from clients about that.
We obviously take great great pride in the service though that we provide and about making clients' lives easier. So it's invariably about trying to help them resolve problems or come up with solutions that they might have about a range of different things. It could be about buying a house, um, for their children. It could be about, um, you know, finding the right sort of cash flow plan for them going forward. And just getting, you know, any kind of complimentary feedback from clients is always is always a great thing to have.
Obviously, inflation's a key consideration at the moment. And again, having that sort of trusted advisor feel about the relationship with the clients, making sure we're engaging with them regularly, making sure that when it comes to things like that and they're asking about inflation, what they should be doing to protect their asset base, it's, you know, ensuring that they've got the right diversification across their asset base if they're asking for advice around that, revisiting things like cash flow planning again to make sure that over time they're going to be in the right position to achieve their objectives going forward, and really striking the right balance with what what they're doing.
I think we've seen a significant growth in the last couple of years in terms of our investment and wealth advisory service, which is again, as the name would suggest, it's about increasingly providing advice around clients' investments and structuring etcetera, and that's very much a growth area for us. We're seeing more and more clients come to us because they're extremely happy with what we do for them on the banking side of things, lending and deposits. And again, the advice piece plays out right through our offering. So we see that as something that, um, is increasingly important next year and beyond.
I mentioned earlier on, there are a number of key factors that are impacting on clients just now, not least inflation, thinking about, you know, how they plan for the future and inheritance tax as well. So all these things are very much high on the agenda for clients, and so should be for us as well. [Music]