Culture and Core Values

At NTL, just focusing on making profit is not enough. We are a company that cares. We realize that we have the responsibility to make a difference and leave the world a better place than when we arrived. Our role in the grand scheme of things is to create opportunities for our employees, our customers, our partners, and others in society to have a chance at sustainable success. Only when everyday citizens are given the opportunity to capture their innate potential to be self-reliant, will our society be stronger. We at NTL enable this by seeking ways to help our clients have access to fair, responsible, and transparent financial products and services. We do this with the understanding that we can create opportunity by providing access which is about fairness of process (giving people a chance), which is not to be confused with ensuring that everyone receives the same amount reward, or fairness of result. People must take advantage of opportunities through their own accountability and actions in order to benefit from them.

To be clear, while this value promotes that idea that profit insufficient, profitable growth IS A MUST. We are neither a non-profit nor charity organization, we have private-sector shareholders. Only a company that is strong can sustain contributions to society. Strong companies invest more in their employees learning and development, and in so doing help to contribute a more skilled and educated workforce. Companies that continue to grow not only hire and train more and more people, but also have budgets to take risks and try to new things, eventually leading to higher standards and innovation. Healthy companies and their employees that do things right pay their fair share of taxes to the government, thus giving back to local communities and the nation as whole.

We realize that we will never fully know the impact of the work we do. We give opportunities to the employees we groom and the clients we serve, not expecting to receive any payment in return, but hoping that they have it in their hearts to pay it forward with an act of generosity or kindness to others. We take pride and work hard to create lasting impact to society and feel privileged to work alongside people who share in this vision. Even at times of pressure, difficulty, and doubt, it is this purpose that keeps us energized to keep going.

We believe in giving.

We don't own this company, but we make decisions like we do. NTL has always been a company led by employees who care about the company, what it does today, and its future prospects. Our sense of ownership makes us passionate about delivering value to our clients because we believe that if they succeed, so will we.

Only after weighing the costs against benefits and risks against rewards do we make decisions to lend, invest, or spend our shareholders money as if it were our own. The way to demonstrate gratitude to our shareholders for entrusting us with their assets and providing us with career growth opportunities and rewards is to act responsibly on their behalf.

Having ownership is not about cutting costs or the avoidance of spending money, but rather it is about getting more done with less resources. Everyone knows how to cut costs or buy stuff, but at NTL we know how to spend money.

As owners we recognize that nothing ever runs smoothly, and daily problems are a part of doing business. NTLers don't have time to agonize over problems, we are too busy looking for solutions. Overcoming problems is a good; it helps us gain experience so that we can make better decisions in the future.

As owners with a vested interest in the success or failure of our organization, we actively manage our most valuable asset -- our people. This includes making tough decisions to ensure that our people adapt to perform and succeed, because it will ensure that our organization remains healthy.

Even legends started off as amateurs. Some people have modest life goals...to own a small coffee shop and be their own boss. Not us. We realize that we have the opportunity and resources to build a world-class organization, and that is exactly what we will do.

When everyone does their job well, we succeed. When we execute our jobs well individually and work together as a team, we WIN BIG. When one of us focuses too much on our individual priorities, we usually lose. At the same time, when others in the team succeed, we celebrate wholeheartedly, because we know when any one of us succeed, our whole team get stronger.

Collaborating to win occasionally means throwing out organization charts, job scope, individual KPIs and titles that are conventional management tools of large organizations, so we can focus on the task at hand and on delivering results. In a team of leaders, there are no superstars, just the right people in the right jobs. As a team, we recognize the importance of providing feedback candidly, without reservation because it helps our team win.

There will inevitably be times when one of us is off our game, putting our team goals at risk -- it happens to the best of us. When this occurs, someone silently volunteers to pick up the slack. When some of us are behind, others sacrifice to go the extra mile and do more, thus ensuring no one falls too far behind, so we can still cross the finish line as a team. This behavior of sacrificing for the team and volunteerism is a hallmark of NTLs past successes and expected of NTLers. No individual or unit is bigger than the company, or the team. When we win as a group, the rewards are greater and the victory sweeter.

When no one is looking, we do the right thing. When it is difficult, we do the right thing. When everyone behaves with integrity, we create an environment of trust, which is fundamental to every individual and team relationship. Where there is no trust, there is no team. Our NTL family cannot succeed without relying upon one another. Doing what is right inherently implies that we strive to know what the rules are, so at NTL we pay attention to the relevant laws, rules, and regulations. This doesn't mean we can't make mistakes. To err is to be human. But it does mean that we must not use ignorance and negligence as a defense.

Integrity also means we are loyal to our clients and our company, and that we have the courage to speak up when we see something that is inappropriate. We refuse to deceive, cheat, take advantage of, or steal from our clients, the company, and from one another because that's not who we are.

We serve our clients with friendly authenticity. We understand that being in a position of vulnerability, to have to ask others for help is difficult and sometimes scary. We aim to ease their apprehensions quickly and help our customers overcome the difficult times in their lives and help them achieve financial independence. We want our clients to feel, after every interaction, that we only want what's best for them. We achieve this serving our customers as if they were respected family members who ask us for our honest advice.

Much like our company, our personal development journeys will never be complete. As individuals, we recognize that one of the few things in our bodies that can continue to get better as we get older is our mind. With more know-how and experiences our judgment and decision-making gets better and better and we become increasingly more valuable to our community.

It is simply not enough to only know things. We must seek to understand and apply it so that we can develop wisdom. We are naturally curious about why things are and how they work. This curiosity is what pushes us to seek to understand the "spirit" of rules, regulations and guidelines, rather than the just the written "letter." With this understanding of the spirit behind the letter, we can refine our judgment and apply it to situations in which deviations and exceptions are needed. As our understanding of our area of expertise grows, we will be less fearful of innovation, and able to develop superior products and services for our customers.

While NTL is committed to providing programs and support for learning, we recognize that we must also learn by doing. We don't rely solely on formal training programs, we control own our self-development. Beyond the bare-minimum, we seek to learn through observation, reading, trial-and-error, and through the experience-sharing and wisdom of our colleagues. Learning from other people's mistakes is one of the shortcuts in life. Our curiosity, commitment to learning and development, and experiences beyond our comfort zone are what drive us to grow each and every day.

Constantly embracing change is an imperative because change is inevitable. Organizations that don't change go extinct. On the other hand, those that never stop reinventing themselves have the potential to live forever. At NTL, we do more than just survive change, we drive it and thrive because of it.

There are always forces that we can't control which are always shifting. Consumer behavior, technology, competition, and regulations to name a few. What we CAN do is keep an open mind and adapt to them while deploying our resources to ensure that we are not surprised by these changes.

To innovate is to lead. Where possible, we want NTL to be the force driving the change in any environment in which we operate. This requires us to be flexible while constantly experimenting, challenging ourselves to find a better way to do things. This inherently requires us to take risks, and in doing so, fail. We are unafraid of taking calculated risks -- in fact, we encourage learning through mistakes.

When we think we are on to a good idea, we ask ourselves the simple question, "Why Not?" Our evolution is enabled by paying attention to with what's going on externally and being open to testing new concepts and ideas internally. We are a culture that is not fearful of upending the status quo by blowing up what we have built if we think we can reinvent and rebuild ourselves to be much better, because we realize what got us here may not take us further.

Ensuring that we execute well to remain a successful, healthy, growing organization requires a ton of effort and dedication. Working hard is unavoidable. Lucky for us, we are passionate about creating opportunities for others, and that's why we don't mind going the extra mile. It's also why we lose track of time and sometimes find ourselves spending more time with our colleagues than with our friends and families.

Hard work needs to be accompanied by smart work. Working smart also means minimizing the formality and bureaucracy of large companies. Creating a culture of informality allows us to troubleshoot problems and seize opportunities with the quickness and nimbleness of small start-ups. This is not about cutting-corners, or sacrificing thoroughness, but rather about seeking practical and simple solutions to complex problems, so that we accomplish more using less time and resources. We allocate our time productively to think about solutions instead of worrying about problems.

Working smart means having fun along the way. When we don't enjoy what we do and the people who we do it with, we burn out. That's neither smart nor fun. At NTL we all contribute to the atmosphere and community to which we belong. We are not robots, we are all unique, and probably a bit weird. We embrace one another's quirks and appreciate everyone's individuality.

The path to success can be stressful, but it doesn't have to be. Winning can and should be fun. Having fun doesn't mean we aren't serious about execution. We celebrate our successes, large and small, enjoy each other's company, speak frankly and informally about work to solve problems, and go all-out when it's time to party!