Virgin has restructured its financial services offerings under one name.
The Virgin financial services offering has done well, offering innovative products in a simple fashion to consumers over the Internet and by telephone. At their launches Virgin One, Virgin Money and Virgin Direct were ahead of the market and have managed to establish a strong customer base. Virgin is now a name that is recognized within the financial services sector. However, the three separate brands have confused consumers.
With three different companies to choose from, one offering current account mortgages, another offering Virgin own-brand financial products, and a last offering product aggregation services, it is unsurprising that customers could be confused. With the first of these sold to Royal Bank of Scotland earlier this year, Virgin is combining the others into Virgin Money, the name keeping it in line with the rest of Virgin’s products and simplifying the process for the customer.
The original logic for keeping Virgin Direct separate from Virgin Money was that the former offered too few products at launch. But this is no longer a problem, as Virgin Direct has expanded. The new Virgin Money will be consistent with other Virgin brands, with the name directly connected to the products and services offered. This will help create a consistent brand across the Virgin empire, enabling Virgin to successfully launch Virgin Money in other countries.
This will help the customer – people are much more likely to reach the right products with everything under one name, although admittedly RBS’ continuing use of the Virgin One brand will cause confusion. Still, the current Virgin Money and Virgin Direct do have consistent messages to give to the consumer: both aim to give customers choice and value, focusing on customer service. The combination will help consolidate Virgin’s position in the UK market and will establish a platform for growth not only in the UK but in other countries as well.
