Leeds Building Society

Today is #CareDay 🙌 An opportunity for us to celebrate and recognise children and young people with care experience. It's brilliant to be supporting two amazing charities, Barnardo’s and Become, on projects that help young people moving from care to independent living. We’ll be sharing more on these projects soon. Interested to find out more about Barnardo's and Become? Give them a follow. #CareDay #CareDay2025 #VoicesThatCare

People have been asking me about whether ISA rules will change. Clearly I don’t have a crystal ball, but I wanted to lay out some reasons why such a move is a bad idea. For anyone who hasn’t seen the news reports, a number of investment companies are pushing the Chancellor and her Economic Secretary to either scrap Cash ISAs completely or reduce the amount people can save tax-free in them. The argument in favour of restricting Cash ISAs goes something like this: people should be encouraged to make more out of their money by putting more of it into equities supporting investment in UK companies. Clearly over the long term equities outperform cash returns. But there are counterpoints which appear to be absent from the debate. You can see my full thoughts on our website but in summary: Lots of savers don’t want this – we asked our members in January whether they intended to open a Stocks & Shares Isa in 2025 and only 7% did. The vast majority of them are fully aware of the potential upside of investments, but are making a conscious choice to ensure their capital is protected. Investments will not be suitable for everyone – there are plenty of circumstances where people shouldn’t risk their savings being undermined by short term movements in share prices (and the majority of our cash ISA savers are pensioners). Removing the tax-free wrapper would result in extra costs for the average saver – if Cash ISA savers opted to move their money into non-ISA cash accounts rather than S&S Isas, those with a typical balance would face an additional tax burden of £750 a year. It’s naïve at best, or misinformation at worst, to say money saved in cash ISAs is dormant – we, and all building societies, use it to fuel our mortgage lending. If you reduce that funding, mortgages would become more expensive for borrowers. The last thing families and aspirational homeowners need is to have greater pressure on their mortgage bills when millions are already facing cost of living pressures. Arguments in favour of growth in some sectors need to consider the wider picture - increased stocks and shares funding may not even be invested in UK companies. Meanwhile this will come at the cost of impacting the UK mortgage and housing market when the Government is rightly aiming to create 1.5m more homes which will require affordable mortgages. This would be bad for mutuals and the diversity of the UK’s financial services sector - before the election, Labour’s growth plan committed it to doubling the mutual sector and creating a level playing field within financial services. A change of this nature would drive in precisely the opposite direction. We will continue to speak up on behalf of our members and savers who would be impacted by this. We support growth and we believe in changing the status quo when it drives better outcomes. But we also believe in the mutual model, consumer choice and fairness. The proposals for changing Cash ISA rules do not deliver on any of those.

We’ve been celebrating some of the fantastic apprentices who have enjoyed what our apprenticeship programme has had to offer. Check out what Lexie Brown, Finance Apprentice, had to say 👇 Find our current live vacancies, including apprenticeship roles, here: https://brnw.ch/21wQAYN #NAW2025

📢 Do you think businesses should pay their fair share of tax? Us too! We’ve been selected as the lead partner for Good Business Fortnight’s “Fair Tax Friday”. This is thanks to our responsible business practices - like being accredited by the Fair Tax Foundation with the Fair Tax Mark since 2018. The two-week campaign by Good Business Charter celebrates businesses that: 👏 Recognise responsible practices and why they matter 👏 Do the right thing when it comes to tax transparency 👏 Make a positive impact on society and the environment Read this Q&A with our Director of Finance Operations, Andrea Harrison LLB FCA, to find out why we care about fair tax 👉 https://brnw.ch/21wQGXx And for more information on Good Business Fortnight 2025, follow Good Business Charter. #GoodBusinessFortnight #FairTaxFriday

Developing skills ✅ Hands on experience ✅ Gaining an insight ✅ How an apprenticeship should be 👌 You can make a real impact as an apprentice, just like Aji... Check out our vacancies, including apprenticeship roles, here: https://brnw.ch/21wQAYN #NAW2025

It’s National Apprenticeship Week 🙌 Are you or someone you know considering an apprenticeship? Check out our current vacancies here: https://brnw.ch/21wQAYN Watch our colleagues sharing their advice about starting a career as an apprentice 👇 #NAW2025

Following today's Bank of England base rate reduction, our CEO, Richard Fearon, shares his thoughts on the impact for homeowners and savers 👇

Good Business Fortnight is underway, and we're proud to be involved. We'll be supporting Fair Tax Friday in partnership with Fair Tax Foundation on 14th February - keep your eyes peeled for more. Get clued up on #GoodBusinessFortnight 👇

Happy New Year! We’re excited to see what 2025 will bring, and wish all our members and colleagues the very best for the year ahead. #ItsBetterToBelong

To our members and colleagues celebrating Hanukkah, we hope you have a wonderful Festival of Lights filled with health and happiness 🕯️