Highlights of 2006
YouthBank
Ulster Bank has launched a network of 30 YouthBanks in partnership with three national community youth foundations. This initiative encourages youngsters to take decisions on which youth-led community projects to support, underlining Ulster Bank's commitment to its community investment programme across the island of Ireland.
- Total customer numbers increased by 6% to 1.7 million. Business customer numbers grew by 6% or 10,000, while personal customer numbers also grew by 6% or 90,000. Use of internet and telephone banking increased 47%.
- We opened 80,000 new current accounts in 2006, following the introduction of transaction fee-free banking for all retail customers.
- We acquired 18,000 new student customers (9,000 in Northern Ireland and 9,000 in the Republic of Ireland), representing a 50% increase on 2005. Additional relationships were established with the two major universities in Northern Ireland.
- In 2006 we became the No 1 financial institution for business in Northern Ireland, with 32% of all businesses classifying Ulster Bank as their main bank.
- We have increased staff numbers by 9% to provide additional service in our branches and Business Centres. We have grown our Corporate Markets sales force by 15% in the last 18 months, with 200 new recruits.
- We continued our £50 million branch improvement and maintenance programme, transforming an additional 66 branches in 2006. The programme is now 70% complete and scheduled to finish in 2007.
- We increased the number of our Business Centres, opened a new bank branch in Midleton, Co. Cork, and relocated our Donegal and Dundrum branches to larger premises.
- First Active introduced an offset flexible mortgage that allows customers to link savings accounts and a current account to reduce the cost and duration of their mortgage.
- We have successfully integrated our banking systems with the RBS Group IT platform giving us a unique competitive advantage in Ireland, as well as access to a wider range of products.
- We won the financing of Belfast's Titanic Quarter, one of the largest urban waterfront regeneration projects in Europe, with a first phase that includes 475 apartments, a 120-bed hotel and a large office complex.
- Ulster Bank Structured Finance together with the RBS Power Sector Team successfully structured the funding of a 59.5 Megawatt windfarm involving 70 wind turbines situated in a large bogland site in Gort, Co. Galway, for Gort Windfarms Limited, a subsidiary of ESB.
- In conjunction with RBS Private Placement Group, Ulster Bank arranged a $150 million Private Placement providing Bord Na Móna, the Irish state-owned energy company, with long term funding for the roll-out of its energy, environmental and waste management business strategy.
- We provided £360 million financing for a group of Irish investors to buy Fosse Park, a shopping centre outside Leicester, in the largest single retail property acquisition in the UK since the late 1990s.
- We have diversified our funding base through securitisations, issuing Ireland's largest residential mortgage securitisation of €3.9 billion and confirming Ulster Bank's status as the largest issuer of securitisation bonds to date in the Irish market.
© 2007