Amigo Community
Our Values
Since our inception in 2005, we’ve always had a strong sense of social, environmental, and economic responsibility. Our success depends on having happy, healthy employees, satisfied customers and being a positive ambassador within not only the financial industry but also our local community. Our values have grown out of this understanding.
We have four business values which form the bedrock of everything we do, driving not only the service we deliver to our customers but also the way we approach our responsibility as an employer and our responsibilities to our local community and the environment.
- We put customers first. We are passionate about making borrowing possible and helping each other to thrive.
- We are Human. We are welcoming and embrace diversity; we respect and listen each other.
- We act with integrity; we are open and honest. We aim to do what is right and fair Always.
- We own the outcome. We find solutions and deliver excellence. We question and challenge the status quo.
Our values have led to involvement in several community and charity projects and have allowed us to create a place where customers, employees, investors and the various causes we support really matter.
Our values also lead us to continue to push for further improvement and excellence, not being satisfied to just continue doing what we’re already doing, but to be open to new ideas, thinking and ways of doing things.
These values help us strengthen relationships with all our stakeholders, build trust, reduce operating costs, mitigate risks and attract and retain the most dynamic, smart and innovative talent in a crowded marketplace.
In 2022, we selected four priority UN Sustainable Development Goals:
- Goal 3: Good health and wellbeing
- Goal 8: Decent work and economic growth
- Goal 10: Reduced inequalities
- Goal 13: Climate action
We will be setting ourselves targets to tackle the goals where we can make the greatest contribution.
Living Healthier Lives
Amigo takes pride in enabling our staff to live healthy, active lives. We offer benefits which encourage staff to exercise, including membership to one of three local gyms, enabling people to exercise when working from home or when they are in the office. This enables lunch time workouts, as well as visits before and after work.
On top of this, to help employees build strong relationships while still being active, we encourage and fund physical events such as Tough Mudder, the Bournemouth Bay run and even climbing the odd mountain!
We also aim to increase awareness of mental health issues. This has included offering mental health awareness training to all employees, hosting activities on World Mental Health Day in association with local charity Dorset Mind, inviting guest speakers to talk about their experiences, training a team of Amigos as mental health first aiders and providing access to a 24/7 support line.
Further health benefits include healthy meal options in our café, fruit, and salads available each day along with vegetarian and vegan lunch options and healthy juices for a perfect breakfast.
Looking after our planet
Amigo has always nurtured a culture that does its best to look after the planet, as well as one another. We want to support our people in making decisions that minimise their impact on the environment with the aim of doing what we do in the most sustainable and environmentally friendly way possible. This is perhaps heightened due to our proximity to the award-winning beaches and stunning natural scenery of the Dorset coastline.
After the COVID-19 Pandemic and associated national lockdowns, we introduced a hybrid way of working. With less people in the office and more employees using laptops which are more efficient than desktop computers, we have seen a reduction in our energy consumption. When our people do travel to the office, we encourage them to cycle and provide multiple internal bike rack spaces.
We also regularly review how our fantastic on-site cafe operates, encouraging our employees to be as environmentally conscious as possible. We encourage the use of individual drinks bottles which can be refilled in the café and we promote the use of employees’ own takeaway boxes to reduce the amount of packaging and waste we produce. Any food waste we do have is collected by a local food waste collection service and taken to a facility for processing into bio-fuel, reducing the amount of waste being taken to landfill sites, whilst also converting it into a form of renewable energy.
In 2022, Amigo selected four priority UN Sustainable Development Goals. Even as a small, on-line financial services business, there are initiatives we can take to contribute to this goal, and we are already taking steps to integrate climate impact into our business planning. Once we have identified the risks and opportunities climate impact presents to us and have assessed our current carbon footprint, we will assess a credible, net zero target for Amigo. It is very early days for us on this journey, but we have a roadmap to deliver our ambitions, set out within our Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) section of our latest Annual Report.
Positively impacting our community
As a key player in the UK specialist lending sector, and as a public listed company, Amigo understands its responsibility to drive positive change in society. Being a force for good in our local and wider community is therefore important to us. The causes we contribute to matter to our employees and impact the community in which we operate. We have very close relationships with local charities which have been voted for by our employees. We support our employees with paid leave to volunteer and run a scheme which encourages our employees to make a donation through their wages each month to these chosen charities.
As a business we organise a variety of fundraising events which contribute to helping support our local community and charities. This has included employees taking part in charitable sports day events, training to complete hikes and runs and arranging charity fundraising days and nights in the office plus much more!
Providing a great place to work
At Amigo, we pride ourselves on providing a great place to work. Not only do we have a fabulous office environment with a fantastic café serving freshly prepared meals, we also offer a wide range of benefits This includes gym membership, an Employee Assistance Program, private medical insurance, pension contributions and maternity/paternity/adoption pay plus paid time off for volunteer work.
Other benefits include hybrid working, a casual dress code, a four and a half day week and the opportunity for employees to bring their dog to work. In addition to this, we actively adopt a positive and supportive culture to ensure employee engagement, wellbeing, and development. Our core values guide all our decisions and are our the bedrock for how we do business.
We have recently formed an employee-led, formally constituted Responsible Business Council. This is part of our ongoing mission to promote inclusivity and to create a forum that encourages diversity of thought, creating a workplace where people feel empowered to ask questions, be curious and share their views, enabling innovation, fresh thinking, and creativity to flourish. Council members are elected annually and meet monthly, reporting to the Board quarterly. The Council provides a real opportunity for our employees to shape the business now and in the future.
What we've been up to
What we have planned
At Amigo we are always striving for improvement, looking for any way in which we can develop. The future therefore holds a number of exciting opportunities for us including:
Cafe
Our cafe team continuing their commitment to going as green as possible, making it even easier for employees to recycle and reducing our plastic usage as much as possible.
Charity
Expanding the support we offer to local charities and developing new schemes to enable agents to become more involved with the charities we support and the charities that mean a lot to them.
Mental Health
Further increasing mental health awareness through a number of employees training to become mental health first aiders.