The UK’s retail financial services market is undergoing some of the biggest changes seen in a generation.  The financial crisis of 2008 has radically reshaped the market, with large-scale retail banking takeovers being followed by forced divestment programmes and the emergence of a new wave of banks.

This has happened in an environment of unprecedented regulatory changes, with retail financial services business having to adapt to Solvency II, Basle III, a much more proactive regulator and many other changes.

We at Brightpool are interested to hear your views on how these changes are affecting retail financial services businesses and what those changes mean for the future.

We hoped you might take a couple of minutes to fill in a short survey about changes to retail financial services and the impact those changes are having on the jobs market.

The results are completely anonymous and we’ll report back to you on them soon. Please have your say by clicking the following link:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BrightPoolquestionnaireMay2012

If you haven’t updated your CV with us recently please send me your latest copy or call me on 020 7936 3011. Equally if you would like to speak to a consultant about the market please contact them by visiting our meet the team page:

http://www.brightpool.co.uk/meet-the-team

Finally, to receive all BrightPool assignment updates please ensure you are registered to our website and have joined our Linkedin group:

http://www.brightpool.co.uk/profile/new

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2419147&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

Many thanks!

Angela Hickmore is the Managing Director of BrightPool.

The Olympic and Paralympic games, the RBS 6 Nations, United v City and England’s tour of South Africa. It has been and will continue to be an exceptional year of sport (although for those that commute through London excitement regarding the first two may be limited!).

So to inspire debate what is the biggest feature on the 2012 sporting calendar? You guessed it – The Lloyds Rugby Football 7s on May 17th! Around 40 teams will descend on Richmond Rugby Club battling to be crowned the champion of champions. As with sport, and in keeping with this tenuous analogy, 2012 so far has provided some positive, some negative and some unexpected results in the insurance market.

The last month has seen some positive Q1 results. Ageas reported an 11.1% year-on-year rise in total income and RSA has reported a 5% rise in GWP.

Some have had mixed results as RSA saw a 17% reduction in their motor premiums but a 7% growth in household and 11% increase in pet premiums.

Unfortunately, there are those teams that suffer. Andrew Moss stepping down from his post at Aviva springs to mind. In contrast, congratulations to Dr Nigel Wilson who was appointed Legal & General’s new Group Chief Executive.

Recruitment within insurance continues to remain steady. Even with the continuing worries over the Eurozone the insurance market’s natural aversion to risk should allow them to weather another storm.

Good luck to all those taking part on the 17th May. Although, that changes for those playing against QBE!

As always it would be great to hear your thoughts.

Jacob Bray is the Insurance Consultant for BrightPool.

The BrightPool linkedin group is two and a half years old and currently stands at over 500 members.

It contains the latest thought  leadership from Financial Services professionals such as yourself, news stories, sector specific subgroups, polls, jobs and blogs from each BrightPool consultant.

Having all these different streams of information in one place has meant the group is active, interesting, growing quickly and requiring your membership if we do not have so already.

We’d also encourage you to invite your relevant connections to join as well. You can do so by clicking ’share group’ in the top right hand corner of the screen once your membership has been approved.

Please join the BrightPool linkedin group by clicking here.

If you have any further social media or website enquiries please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me.

Thomas Bridge is the Marketing Manager for BrightPool.

I recently conducted a Poll to try and ascertain how far people are willing to travel to work. This was because on that day I met with a contractor who said that even one day’s travel every other week  to an office that was 80 miles away was too much. The other nine days of those two weeks would have been at an office only a few miles from their home. Perhaps I am naïve to this level of inflexibility as I assume (probably wrongly) that contractors are willing to travel (even one day every two weeks). After all, contactors do generally get paid a higher rate than their counterpart permanant employees and in return I thought contractors offered flexibility to earn this rate.

The poll indicated that a majority of people (40%) would stay near to the location of the role. Therefore they may have a long journey at the start and end of the week but there is minimal travel in between.  32% said they would travel up to 50 miles to work which seems a reasonable distance to travel as part of a daily routine.  I was completely surprised that not one person voted for working from home with some travel. Is this not the ideal? Or do we like being in the office and interacting with our fellow counterparts in person?

There are other factors that come in to play here too – length of journey can be split in time versus distance. In Yorkshire it may take an hour to travel 50 miles but in central London it may take an hour to travel just two!

What are your thoughts on this?  Do you feel that travel within a role is the norm or would you only look for options that provide you with 100% of your time closer to home? I completely understand that everyone is different and has different priorities – whether they are contractors or permanent employees -  but I am keen to hear your opinion.

How far are you willing to go?

Natalie Fennell is the Financial Services Account Manager at BrightPool.

I met with a Client this month following a hugely successful programme launching a new digital banking proposition. This proposition has had the most compliments of any new service launched in this bank, and equally as impressive – the fewest number of complaints. This interested me for a few different reasons as I wondered how they’d achieved this feat. The Client’s answer; the key to everything is customer communication – something which according to my contact is not managed as well as it should be. He believes that all projects should start with the customer and work backwards, which to me was refreshing.

It’s worth thinking about a bit further… Think back for example – have you ever logged onto your internet banking account to make a payment and hey presto, the entire interface looks completely different? Then three days later you receive a letter telling you about the ‘exciting changes’ taking place (future tense)? I know I certainly have and it’s frustrating as you feel like you have to learn how to use the system all over again. Well on this programme, the main goal was to maximise customer satisfaction so the IT was led from the customer side of change all the way through. This involved asking customers what they wanted, and then updating them throughout the design, testing and implementation phases right the way up to launch. The communication with customer was as important, if not more important that the product/service itself. The result? Happy customers! It all seems a bit obvious but judging by my last experience, the first I had heard about the changes to my online banking services was after it had happened.

I asked the Client what the inspiration was for the way he led this programme and his answer was ‘Who Moved my Cheese?’ (a book by Dr Spencer Johnson). This is generally applied to managing people within an organisation but he mentioned that its application was equally as appropriate externally for customers. The conclusion of the book is that if you manage change effectively and get people ‘ready for change’ they will embrace it. Put simply the book says:

* Change happens, be ready for it (tell customers what you intend to do)
* Get ready for the change (prepare customers for the likely timelines and new features as early as possible)
* Monitor change (tell customers about where you are in development and get them counting down to go-live)
* Adapt to change quickly (don’t parallel run – just do it and this will mean that customers will embrace it quickly)
* And the end result will be that Customers will enjoy the change!

Change is never easy but absolutely essential to keep ahead of the game… Have you come across any interesting/unusual approaches such as this in your programmes? I’d love to hear your experiences!

James O’Loughlin is the Managing Consultant, Retail Banking for BrightPool.

I am getting married this year!! And in case you are one of the few rare people that did not know this, let me tell you it is fast approaching. You will all be glad to hear that the preparations are coming along very nicely and things seem to be going according to plan. However, after chatting to a friend who recently got married herself, I was thrown an unexpected curveball which was not identified in my project plan. Wedding insurance! I did not even know such a thing exists. Typically wedding insurance covers all aspects of the wedding and policies cover vendors letting you down, wedding dresses, rings and gifts going missing and even the cancellation or postponement of the wedding. After a quick survey with my friends who are already married, I must admit I did not know whether to purchase this insurance or not. Surely my careful selection of vendors – and husband – and precision planning means nothing can go wrong on the day and therefore this is just another unnecessary cost?

So I found it interesting to read an article from consumer champion Which? who have recently identified a list of insurance products that deliver poor outcomes and could potentially waste our money. The list included an abundance of products from extended warranties, Payment Protection Insurance, over 50s plans and water pipe insurance. I was particularly surprised that selected in the list was mobile phone insurance. Handsets have developed significantly over the last five years and are now extremely valuable pieces of technology that can cost up to £500. I personally would not dream of going without mobile phone insurance. However the report suggests that the cost of mobile phone insurance is very expensive, costing up to £180 a year and that consumers would be best placed putting their mobile phones on your home insurance as it provides the same cover.

Having spoken to a few people about the insurance products that they’ve purchased people can go from one extreme to another, some being insured for any and every eventuality that may occur and others that do not even have home insurance. What do you think are the essential insurances that you could not go without? Are financial firms dreaming up too many new ways to sell insurance products that no one wants or needs? Should we as consumers be more savvy and investigate whether some of these insurance products can be covered in existing policies?

I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on this subject.

Personally speaking, I feel that insurance is essential when it comes to protecting your health and expensive purchases. So, yes I have now bought wedding insurance. Let’s hope I do not have to make a claim.

Mellissa Cox is the Senior Consultant for Financial Services at BrightPool.

I mentioned in a previous blog that the number of new regulations affecting banks was rising at an unprecedented level (an average of 60 new pieces of regulation per day).

However, according to PwC’s Banking Banana Skins 2012 report (in association with the CSFI – where they polled 700 bankers, regulators and interested parties across 58 countries on their top 10 issues), concern about regulation has dropped from 3rd to 6th place. So despite the increase in the number of new regulations, it appears that banks are more comfortable working in a more heavily regulated environment.

However, the severity of the new regulations is having an impact on the value of the banks, with RBS CEO Stephen Hester stating in a speech on Wednesday evening: “The UK regulatory reforms on their own have probably cost £10-20 billion from our future market value” (or to be more precise, they’ve cost RBS’ shareholders… or the UK government – as it holds c. 80% of the shares).

The new regulations are pushing the UK banks towards improving their capital and liquidity and ring-fencing their retail banking operations. So although the banks are getting better at dealing with the regulations, the negative effect on their market value and the increased costs for the new teams of regulatory compliance staff appear to be taking their toll.

I would love to hear back from you regarding your views on the new regulatory landscape and its effect on UK Banks.

Jon Goodman is the Risk, Regulatory & Compliance Consultant for BrightPool.

A little while ago I read an interesting article, which highlighted the problem of lack of trust between general insurers and their customers.  He suggested regulatory and legislative changes and slow speed of settlement may have contributed to customers’ loss of confidence in insurers.

The increasing frequency of injury claims (motor insurance injury claims have increased by 70% in the last six years, despite a 23% drop in casualties caused by road accidents) and the increasing  incidence of insurance fraud (a 10% increase in 2010-2011 according to the ABI) are most likely contribute to insurers’ loss of trust in customers.  Indeed, a recent study by Axa concluded that insurance is seen as a ‘soft target’ for people struggling for extra cash during times of austerity.

The article notes that improving this relationship is critical to assuring long term profitability.  But how to do that? Cuddly meerkats all round?

A paper by PWC published in January suggests that power lies with customers, who will increasingly expect simplicity and transparency.  PWC expect that insurers will react with innovative products that specifically match their customers’ needs.  Further investment in mobile and interactive technology will deliver speed of service and mobility .  Will this go some way to improving the relationship?  How will customers react, and will their reaction instil confidence in insurers?

I’d be interested to hear what you think!

Hattie Poole is the Insurance Consultant at BrightPool.

I’m assuming the answer is probably yes, what with quick and cheap flights at the start and end of the week being similar to any commute that involves the M25, M6 or M1.

Up until now, the selection criteria for BrightPool candidates – determining which assignments you choose to receive by email – has contained just UK regions and one titled ‘International’.

This would pose a problem for any assignment we wish to advertise in the Republic of Ireland for example. It’s international, but certainly not the same as commuting to somewhere say in mainland Europe.

To correct this anomoly, we’ve added a ‘Northern Ireland’ tickbox to the UK selection criteria and a ‘Republic of Ireland’ tickbox to the International criteria. So people who are willing to work on the Emerald Isle – but not East Istanbul – are now  catered for!

As BrightPool grows we aim to add more regions to the ‘International’ locations section and we’ll make you aware each time we do.

If you’d like to be informed of contract assignments in either Northern or the Republic of Ireland, please log in to you candidate account and edit your location preferences by clicking here:

http://www.brightpool.co.uk/profile/edit

Thomas Bridge is the Marketing Manager for BrightPool.

The Co-operative Insurance may have found a way to help the young driver recapture the dizzy feeling of freedom – seemingly granted – from owning your own car. A year on from the launch of their insurance aimed at young drivers there are some interesting results.

Out of 10,000 young driver insurance claims with their ‘smart box’ insurance, they are 20% less likely to have a crash and the average claims are 30% less costly. The fitted box monitors speed, acceleration, braking, time of day and cornering. Depending on these results premiums would either increase or decrease every 90 days.

I always thought of myself as a safe driver but statistics are hard to combat. One in eight British drivers are under 25, but a quarter of drivers who die in traffic collisions are in this age group and of those a disproportionate number are male. The outcome led to me having to insure my first car for £2500 (quotes ranged up to £7000) for third party only. The car itself cost me £500 and had a top speed of 70 miles per hour, downhill, leaning forward and with the wind behind it.

With insurers now also being unable to discriminate in regards to gender this allows the business to provide the savings to those who deserve it – although it should be mentioned that premiums can go up as well as down.

What are your thoughts – could this also be used for the 25+ marketplace?

Jacob Bray is the Insurance Consultant for BrightPool.