Jim Islam, CEO of OneFamily, an award-winning financial services organisation based in the UK, discusses how the company has evolved since he stepped into the role. With a personal story that includes overcoming financial hardship, Jim brings both lived experience and professional expertise to his leadership, shaping OneFamily’s commitment to financial inclusion, education, and campaigning for those who might otherwise go unheard.
Jim shares why one of the organisation’s core pillars is its people, and how OneFamily cultivates trust and loyalty with its members. From digital transformation to what it means to lead a modern mutual, Jim offers insight into what drives OneFamily today, and where it is headed over the next 50 years.
Jim, you joined OneFamily in 2020 as CFO and stepped into the CEO role in 2023, how has the organisation evolved during your time at the helm?
OneFamily is known for being an investments provider that focuses on family finances – in particular tax efficient products such as the ISA, junior ISA and lifetime ISA. We are also the UK’s biggest child trust fund provider. This is a long-term, tax-free savings account set up by the UK government for children born between 2002 and 2011.
Our products are designed to be easy to use, to put the benefits of investing into the hands of ordinary families. We want to enable people to be able to invest over the long term and beat the return that they would receive by saving in cash – which is easily devalued by inflation.
For us, making investing available to everyone is about social mobility and financial inclusion. By helping smaller savers to invest, we are opening up opportunities to them that might not be available elsewhere.
But we wanted to do more, so in 2022 we acquired Beagle Street – an online life insurance provider that offers affordable, straightforward life and critical illness cover. It was a great fit for us as a mutual, because it supports families in ensuring that loved ones are covered should the worst happen to the main wage earner. It’s a simple to understand product that supports those whose worlds would otherwise have been thrown into chaos without protection in place.
I’ve focused on growing OneFamily, acquiring new business and cultivating the commercial culture within the business – which has included bringing new books of business on board from other providers.
And all this has been powered by the modernisation of the business from the ground up. We’ve embraced AI and the very latest technology to improve our customers’ experience, making it easier for them to manage their finances and to make sure that they’re aware of the products that are best suited to them.
It’s important because it means we can reach those customers who need our help more easily – to support social mobility and put safety nets in place that might not otherwise be there.
You’ve spoken publicly about experiencing financial hardship growing up, how has that shaped your leadership approach and vision for OneFamily today?
I was the one who always studied hard at school – my background is absolutely what has driven me. From the age of 14 I worked as a private tutor in science and maths, alongside my O Level studies. It meant extra, very necessary money for the household – this wasn’t pocket money for me.
In Pakistan, where I grew up, there’s no social security system and people rely on their family as they get older. So, education gave me the social mobility that I needed to fulfil my family’s needs.
After my A Levels, I joined a government-run training scheme to train as an actuary, later completing an MBA before moving to the UK. As a naturalised British citizen, I am very patriotic – the culture of equality that I see in Britain is very closely aligned with my values.
So, I place great value on the importance of education; it’s the foundation stone upon which social mobility can be built. And as OneFamily’s CEO, I want to hold out my hand of support to those who don’t know where to turn and to use my platform to lift people up and inspire them to fulfil their potential.
I see OneFamily as having a duty to give back to society and the country. My view is that, as a mutual, it has a unique voice in the financial services industry with a higher purpose and social conscience. With no shareholders to satisfy it can invest its profits in the development of products that will support ordinary families, whilst also supporting the good causes and charities that provide for those most in need.
I believe in thinking big, having great aspirations and setting audacious goals to free potential. With education, encouragement and empowerment any child can achieve their biggest and most colourful of dreams. And in enabling social mobility, I see an opportunity to support the country I love and to help its people to grow and to thrive.
Education is clearly something you’re passionate about. Can you tell us how OneFamily supports young people, particularly through initiatives like the Young Person’s Education Grants? And beyond direct support, you also provide financial education resources on your website, why is that part of the picture important to you and the organisation?
We have our Young Person’s Education Grants, which help 11–19-year-olds in further education or training by providing up to 250GBP to cover essential costs like travel, tools or specialist clothing – particularly where financial hardship might otherwise be a barrier.
We’re also partnered with the charity RedSTART, to improve financial education for primary school children – especially in disadvantaged areas. And we enjoy getting hands-on by helping to run workshops in schools alongside hosting pupils in our offices for financial education sessions – they’re great fun and bring a different energy to the office. I think we learn as much as the children!
Beyond that, we’re constantly looking for ways to provide financial education resources to our customers and the wider public – through our online content and social media. If you are in a position where you are a respected source of financial information, then it’s important that you use your platform wisely to help as many people as you can.
OneFamily is a proud supporter of The ICMIF Foundation. Why is it important for a UK-based mutual to support financial inclusion globally as well as in your local communities?
As a mutual, OneFamily is part of a heritage of doing right by others that stretches back to the 18th century. With foundations built on fairness and integrity, mutuals were the original crowd-funders, enabling working people to put money aside and build their financial resilience for when times were tough.
As a member of the International Cooperative and Mutual Insurance Federation (ICMIF) OneFamily is part of a global organisation that has a core philosophy of collaboration, solidarity and a belief that there is strength in working together.
There’s much for our team to learn from in working globally - reaching financially excluded communities isn’t an issue that’s unique to emerging markets. We’ve seen how, here in the UK, there’s a need to support the most vulnerable, to inspire life chances and to grow financial well-being. The safety nets that people once thought would break their fall are looking distinctly thread-bare and, as a mutual, we need to look at ways to build financial resilience for our members and those who we’ve yet to reach.
So, being a proud supporter of The ICMIF Foundation plays to our strengths and our mutual roots of putting people first. It’s about humanity and supporting others as they grow their resilience – irrespective of where they live.
It’s important to understand and respond to what’s happening in our own backyard, and we will continue to do this. But we also need to recognise that inequality is a global problem and that we are part of that very same global community. We can’t close our eyes to what happens beyond our boundary fence, because we need to care for our neighbours too.
OneFamily is known for ‘campaigning for the voiceless’ and your campaigning work includes important initiatives like the Child Trust Fund and Lifetime ISA. Why do you think it's important to take a stand on these issues?
As the CEO of a financial mutual, I’m in a unique position that allows me to give a platform to those people who might otherwise go unheard. It’s a huge responsibility and one that I have seized with both hands because it’s important.
I listen to what our customers are saying, I want to know what their lives are like, what they find difficult, where they feel excluded or need help. And we use our connections in the media and at Westminster to amplify their voices to the people who can make change happen.
An example of this is where we discovered that young people who lack mental incapacity had not been taken into consideration when child trust funds (CTF) were designed. CTFs were tax free savings accounts given by the UK Government to all children born in the UK from 2002 to 2011. However, at the point of maturity – when the young person reached 18 – families of young people without mental capacity were being told they needed to go to the Court of Protection to access their child’s savings. These accounts were often quite small, and parents told us that they simply couldn’t face the difficult, stressful and sometimes costly process that they would need to undertake. Some were even thinking about abandoning their savings.
So, we worked with other providers to put a robust process in place that applied a commonsense approach – enabling families to access the savings that they had put aside for their disabled child over the course of 18 years. But further than that, we decided to loudly campaign on this issue, to bring attention to what we felt was an unfair situation. This has taken us to Westminster, gained columns of coverage in the national press, plus national television news and radio coverage. It led to the Government undertaking a consultation process to look into the issue and we are hopeful that change will eventually happen. It’s not the easiest path to take, but it’s important to take a stand on these issues – to do the right thing and act with humanity at all times.
One of OneFamily’s core pillars is your people and you've made the Sunday Times Best Places to Work list three years in a row. Why is it so important that colleagues thrive, and how do you make that happen?
We recognise that we’re an organisation of diverse people, so we look at people as individuals - who they are and what it takes for them to thrive, what is best for them and their particular set of talents, life experience and circumstances.
We want to make sure that people are in the right role for them, with the necessary skills that they need and that they are being remunerated appropriately.
So, we developed the concept of ‘invested’ which applies in so many ways to who we are and what we are about – we’re invested in our people and their wellbeing, we’re invested in innovation and we’re invested in personal development.
We want our team to feel that they are part of a community, that they are valued and that we are a thoughtful and caring employer. But most of all we aim to engage with people’s hearts and minds, to deserve their loyalty and commitment – which is something you must earn. And to do that you need a happy team. If you can do all those things then you really have struck gold, because engaged people will go the extra mile and will push the company forward.
It’s also important to commit to open communication because trust is right at the heart of an effective team. And for this we need honesty and transparency – even when there’s bad news to tell them. People respect that, they know that I will tell them what’s really happening in the business – that way they know where they stand. It’s common decency and shows them the respect that they deserve to receive from me and the rest of the Executive team. I do this in a number of ways, walking around the floors, weekly email updates, filmed segments, breakfast meetings and Town Halls. In all instances I welcome the most challenging of questions and it’s great to see that my team embraces the opportunity that I give them!
With a 93% customer satisfaction score, OneFamily clearly resonates with its members. What do you think earns that level of trust and loyalty?
As an organisation, our focus is on our members – we listen to them to understand their needs and then we act upon it. That might be in designing accessible, affordable financial products that support financial inclusion or social mobility. Or it could be the importance we place on clear and open communication that meets their needs. So, we have a highly trained customer service team for those people who prefer to deal with a real person by phone, but we also recognise that there are others who like a digital-first option, so that they can organise their finances at a time that’s convenient to them.
But this is a process of continuous improvement; we actively look for ways to make our customers’ experience better – to make their journey through our website simpler and to grow their understanding of the financial products that we offer.
Our research suggests that our customers like our sense of social responsibility, they have been drawn to us because we act with integrity and authenticity. It’s what makes us different as a financial services provider and clearly, we’ve had a high profile with our campaigning work that demonstrates our values and reflects what’s important to our members and their communities.
OneFamily has gone through a major digital transformation, which you've shared with ICMIF through webinars and at our conference in Buenos Aires. How has that made you a stronger, more customer-focused organisation?
We’ve undertaken a significant modernisation programme over the course of the last few years, investing in future proofing our business model and enabling the growth of our business.
It’s enabled us to reduce our costs and allowed us to implement AI to better understand our customers’ needs. It means we can positively transform their experience when they interact with us – which could be by using speech analytics to improve our knowledge of their behaviour and experience of OneFamily, or it could be by helping them to get to the information that they need speedily by using Chatbots that incorporate machine learning that is continually improving the service it provides to them.
Meanwhile, we’ve built from scratch and put in place a unique price engine that can predict customer demand and market pricing accurately – all in real-time. It means we can offer our Beagle Street term insurance customers competitive prices that are tailored to their unique needs whilst also optimising commercial value.
So, we’re leveraging data and analytics to build better products and services for our customers – and by using data in a smarter way we can strengthen the growth of the business and drive efficiency.
OneFamily turns 50 this year, congratulations! As you reflect on that journey from a single-room office to a modern mutual, where do you see the organisation heading in the next 50 years?
It’s quite a milestone and one that we’re extremely proud of. And seeking out the story of who we were back in the days of flares and long hair took a bit of detective work. So, we dug around in dusty old photos, scanned dog-eared documents and yellowed newspaper cuttings to take us right back to our early days in 1975.
What we found was that for OneFamily, our story started out in a one room London office, before moving to our sunny seaside home of Brighton in 1983.
And in our archive of documents, we discovered that OneFamily was set up with the intention of creating a ‘new and dynamic friendly society’. Which is remarkably close to how we describe ourselves today – we’re still dynamic – and from these small beginnings we’ve grown to become one of the UK’s most exciting and ambitious modern mutuals, forever pushing the boundaries of what’s possible to inspire better futures for our members.
I’m pleased to say that our entrepreneurial spirit has never left us, giving us a fire in our belly to do whatever it takes to do right by our members and their communities. We’re here to help families to invest in their future, to protect what matters most to them and to speak up for the voiceless and most vulnerable.
The UK Government has made a commitment to double the size of the cooperative sector, and the Chancellor has highlighted the invaluable role that mutuals like us play in driving growth across the UK. And as a mutual that has a high profile at Westminster, we are well-placed to be able to maximise the opportunity of the renaissance that the mutual sector is about to enjoy.
2024 was the year that we started to see some of the tangible benefits of the investment that we’ve made in our transformation project, which allowed us to reshape the business for future growth. And I’m glad that the ambition and determination that was with us right at the start is still at the heart of who we are as we start our growth into the insurance market with our Beagle Street brand.
So, moving forward, we continue to be absolutely focused on making a positive difference to the lives of our members with simple and accessible investment products that build aspirations, and straightforward protection products that enable resilience. Meanwhile, as a mutual that has recently undergone a significant digital transformation, we are absolutely looking forward to playing our part in the UK’s growth.
Outside of your work at OneFamily, you also involved with other purpose-led organisations including being the Non Executive Chair of the Board of Directors of People’s Partnership, an organisation whose mission is to provide straightforward, accessible, trusted financial products and support that help people become financially stronger, as well as being a trustee for the Royal National Lifeboat Institute, a charity that saves lives at sea. What does purpose-led mean to you?
I am privileged and extremely proud to serve on the Board of Trustees of the RNLI - an organisation whose quietly powerful description is “The charity that saves lives at sea.” As a lifelong supporter, I was honoured to join the Board as Treasurer in 2022 and contribute in a more hands-on way to a cause I deeply believe in.
In the same year, I was equally proud to be appointed Chair of the Board of Directors for the People’s Partnership - an organisation with a rich heritage that helps millions of people across the UK to build financial resilience.
We all have our skills, talents or aptitudes that can make a difference. There are over 180,000 charities in England and Wales with nearly 6.9m volunteers. Each and every one of these people gives something that is truly precious – their time.
For me, being purpose-led is all about creating social impact. Profit is essential – it enables businesses to thrive and supports livelihoods - but it shouldn’t be the only driver. Extending a hand to those in need, especially at their most vulnerable, is at the heart of what it means to be human. And, in my view, kindness is an underrated motivator in the world of business.
