Our investment will support the national game of rugby at all levels, throughout communities across Wales. The partnership will allow us to offer significant benefits to our members, our employees, young people and community organisations across Wales, building upon our existing commitment to supporting the communities in which we operate. This has been demonstrated by our impressive track record of successful sponsorships and community partnerships, which are extremely important to us as a mutual organisation.

We need to ensure that we remain relevant and successful in an ever-changing market place. In order to do this, amongst other activities, we need to invest in our brand, raising awareness, particularly amongst younger audiences, to ensure that our business remains successful in the long term. We remain committed to our Welsh heritage and our heartland operating area, but in order to be really successful, we want to grow our business outside of Wales as well as strengthening our brand and our commitment to communities within Wales. We were approached by the WRU who were seeking a suitable partner and were keen to work with such a well-known Welsh brand, with whom we have already enjoyed a long partnership.

As we seek to continue to grow our business we recognised that we were going to have to invest more in our marketing and brand. We believe that, by comparison to other marketing options, this represented excellent value and importantly ensured that the spend was being invested in our Welsh communities.

Principality Members will benefit from a range of exciting offers and opportunities. Currently Members can access their benefits through the Member Rewards page that can be found online in Your Account. We are currently offering our Members benefits such as 15% discount at the WRU online shop, priority ticket access to selected events and exclusive competitions. Learn more

We are also committed to supporting the WRU’s programme of community events at the Stadium and are keen for our members to become involved in these too in order to give community organisations close to their hearts the opportunity to benefit.

We have chosen to support the partnership with the WRU because the Stadium is not just a sports venue, but rather a multi-purpose venue that hosts a wide variety of events including community events. Members will benefit from opportunities for ticketing and involvement in these as well as rugby games played at the Stadium. We will also be continuing our support of events such as the Eisteddfod, the Royal Welsh Agricultural Show, local charities as well as our community activity.

We cannot disclose the exact figure as this is commercially sensitive for both organisations. However, we have invested a significant sum over ten years, which we believe represents excellent value for our organisation, given the rights and benefits associated with our sponsorship. It will also enable the WRU to continue to invest in rugby at all levels across Wales.

Many competitors invest large sums of money in television advertising but we felt that this partnership was a better use of our marketing spend. It allows us to get a better balance for our marketing budget, by supporting community rugby and providing additional benefits for our members, whilst also giving our brand wider exposure. The incremental cost to the organisation, compared with our existing marketing budget, will be very small, as the sponsorship will be the lynchpin of much of our marketing and brand awareness activity over the next ten years as we refocus our marketing efforts.

We remain committed to our communities and the organisations we partner with, and we will continue with all our committed sponsorships. Our title sponsorship of the Principality Premiership will also continue and we have just signed an extension to that sponsorship taking us through to the end of the season in 2016/17.

Despite ongoing interest rate reductions from many of our competitors we have done our best to support our loyal customers by minimising the impact of these wherever we can. We cannot operate in isolation or against market trends in the savings or mortgage market as this could impact the safety of our business for our Members. It's a difficult balancing act, but we are committed to providing consistently good rates for savers. Our lending programme continues to be funded by savers and we do not see this changing, so we need to ensure that we balance the needs of our savers and borrowers whilst remaining competitive and stable in the long term – to not do so would see savers leave us and that is not what we want.

Separately from any interest rate decisions, we need to ensure we continue to invest in the business for the long term, and this partnership is one way in which we are doing this, to grow our brand and continue to attract new savers and borrowers.

Our investment in the partnership will be used to support the national game of rugby at all levels, across Wales, benefiting rugby clubs and communities in all areas. There will be numerous opportunities throughout the partnership for both members and employees in all areas of Wales and the borders to benefit from the association and we hope that many of the activities we have planned, including our continued sponsorship of the Principality Premiership, will be of interest to a wide range of audiences, not just in the Cardiff area.

When it opened in 1999 the Stadium was initially named as the Millennium Stadium. This was because funding from the Millennium Commission was used to help build the Stadium. In 2014, the WRU approached Principality to further support Welsh rugby following its previous successful partnerships together. In recent years, the naming of stadia has grown in popularity as a marketing and partnership activity, with many successful examples in the UK and worldwide, so this represents a fantastic opportunity for both the WRU and Principality Building Society brands.

We have signed a 10 year partnership to encourage, develop and grow Wales’ national game at all levels.

We went through a long process to decide whether this deal was the best option for us and for our members and ultimately we decided that it was. We felt that no other sponsorship would fit as well with Principality as the partnership with the WRU does. We share a strong history of shared values with the WRU and we are delighted to put our name to the home of Welsh rugby – a home that truly belongs to the nation and is at the heart of Welsh life.

In terms of other marketing opportunities we have carefully assessed our options and this deal is forecast to generate far higher returns to our brand and on a UK-wide stage, which will help us meet our growth aims inside and outside of Wales.

Principality is the largest building society in Wales and the 6th largest in the UK. We have over £7bn assets and recently reported growth in our lending to homeowners to a record £5bn for the first time in our history. We also made profits of £23.2m in the first half of this year. We have a responsibility to you to find the right vehicles to promote the Principality brand inside and outside of Wales and to ensure that we remain relevant now and into the future. We have invested a sum over ten years that will support our growth ambitions while also providing great long-term value for our Members and colleagues.

A brand identity, name, and logo is an organisation’s public face. Principality is the commercial name of our building society and has been for over 150 years. It is a recognisable and powerful part of our brand. It would be a big undertaking to change our name – one that would have significant cost to our Members, far higher than the cost of our partnership with the Welsh Rugby Union. It is very unusual for an established and successful organisation to change its name and this is not a consideration for us at this time. We hope that as our association with the WRU and the Stadium becomes more established, people will become familiar with our name and will associate the word Principality with the building society, rather than thinking of its generic meaning.