"Crazy John's" ISA

When my Sales & Marketing Director John Eastgate ran into my office and said he wanted to launch a regular saver ISA product, I was delighted. As a 160 year old savings institution; helping people to build up a lump sum for a future goal is what we are all about. However when he told me wanted to pay 7% interest, I nearly fell off my chair….. and that was when Bank Base Rate was at the dizzy heights of 1.5%, before the February cut.

We have always ensured that we have competitive ISA products, believing that any product where no tax is deductible from the interest should be encouraged, but 7%? Have you gone crazy, or words to that effect followed his request, but John explained to me how he wanted the product to work and that encouraging people to put a little bit away each month, particularly when motivations to save may not be as strong as they have been in past, was the right thing for a mutual building society to be doing.

So having done the maths and establishing that the real cost of providing such a product is nearer to 3.7% than 7%, I agreed to support him in his quest. His next hurdle would be the Finance Director, Jon Hall, who is great at managing the purse strings. Keen to hear how the conversation had gone, I emailed around asking if the executive team had yet seen Crazy John’s ISA and the name sort of stuck. Now most emails inside the society on this subject are headed up with some sort of reference to “Crazy John”. I don’t think he minds too much, but I bet he is looking forward to the end of ISA season.

The theory though was cemented for me a couple of days ago when a journalist from BBC online contacted me. His opening gambit – 7% ISA, have you gone crazy? Of course I adopted the role previously played by John, talking about the real cost to us and our desire to encourage people to keep on saving.

So in summary, we haven’t gone crazy here at Saffron Building Society, I don’t think anyway, and of course we do have other attractive ISA’s available for those with lump sums or transfers, but anyone in the market for a bit of motivation to squirrel away some money each month, couldn’t do much better than join the “Crazy John” gang for a while!