ARGYLE are pleased to announce that National Deposit has re-branded as National Friendly.

The friendly society and private medical insurance provider are now in the second season of their three-year deal working as an official partner to our Football in the Community trust.

The name change reflects a new focus on building the healthcare side of the business, and conveys the core values of the company.

Adopting a new strapline 'Making a difference to your future', the new brand aims to better reflect the values of the company and take it back to the roots of why friendly societies existed - to help people with their core responsibilities in life, such as their healthcare.

All of the company's members were consulted ahead of the re-brand to gain their opinions and 99% of those who responded were in favour of the changes. The re-brand was part of a wider initiative to build National Friendly into a modern mutual for the 21st century.

National Friendly is keen to stress that the re-brand was not just about a new name; the company has re-structured its business and has made several new senior appointmentsto ensure customers across all channels have access to a comprehensive and value driven healthcare solution.

The new senior team members are Chris Meier, appointed as head of marketing and brand, Glen Hutchinson, who joined the company as head of national sales, and Claire Templeton, appointed as head of ecommerce.

Explaining the re-brand process, CEO Richard Sear said: "We have undertaken research exercises and held focus groups with consumers, employees, brokers and affinity partners to get to this point. The new vision came from within the society as is something we feel passionately about. The feedback from the research groups and our members has assured us we are going in the right direction.

"This is an exciting time for us, our 140 year heritage is extremely important to our customers but we needed to re-focus the direction of the company to answer the demands of today's current and future members."

In-depth research was undertaken by the company and this revealed that for many people the word 'national' is aligned with positive messages of size, strength and solidity. The research also found that many perceived the word 'deposit' as synonymous with banks.

In the current economic climate this was felt to have negative connotations so the company decided to replace 'deposit' with 'friendly', which was found to communicate the company's core softer values of caring, listening and accessibility.

The re-brand was also accompanied by a complete head office refurbishment and the formation of the National Friendly Foundation, which will help members and non members alike, by investing in local communities.