Customer Impact Report 2008

At Standard Life we're pleased to be part of the Customer Impact Scheme - an initiative from the life and pensions industry, which is designed to help us keep putting you, our customers, at the heart of everything we do. Standard Life's second report tells you how the scheme mirrors our own approach to doing business, what we're doing already, and what we plan to do next.

A word from our Group Chief Executive

"We care a great deal about our customers and the things that they want to do in life, so we're dedicated to providing the kind of service that helps them achieve their goals. In fact, our aim for 2008 and beyond is to create what we call 'exceptional customer experiences' by:

• Serving people not products,
• Understanding our customers' needs, ambitions and concerns,
• Regularly reviewing customers' objectives in order to meet their expectations,
• Provide straight-forward, innovative and flexible solutions.

To make sure we get it right, we continually research what our customers think - in 2007 we talked to over 13,000 of you. Taking part in the Association of British Insurers - ABI - Customer Impact Scheme and its major industry survey is an important part of this. At the same time, we've been carrying out our own End Customer Research, which involves speaking to over 700 customers every six months; our quarterly Customer Tracker, which involves between 200 and 250 customers each month; and a twice-yearly study amongst Independent Advisers, which focuses on service and image among our peer group.

We take all the feedback we get from this wide-ranging research very seriously indeed and work hard to understand exactly what it means to our business and our customers. Each kind of research looks at things differently, so to get the most balanced picture about what our customers are thinking, we look at all the results together. There's a summary of the feedback from the Customer Impact Survey in this report - and so you can see a full picture too, we have included some of the findings from our other research. By focusing on areas where they back each other up, we're making sure we keep improving the things that are most important to you.

Being part of the Customer Impact Scheme and embedding its commitments and your feedback into our day-to-day work is helping us to do that and I look forward to keeping you updated about how we're progressing next year."

Sandy Crombie,
Group Chief Executive

You can order a printed copy of this report by calling us on 0845 60 60 836 (call charges may vary) or download a copy here.