The Future of Consumer Finance

Trevor Williams

Chief Economist, Corporate Markets, Lloyds Banking Group

Biography

Trevor joined Lloyds bank from the UK civil service where he worked as an economist after being offered a position whilst studying for a Phd. Trevor has a BA honours degree and a masters in Economics. He is now Chief Economist at Lloyds TSB Corporate. The Corporate Markets economics team supports the bank’s trading and sales activities.

Trevor Williams is a member of the Institute for Economic Affairs Shadow Monetary Policy Committee, setup two months after the actual MPC in 1997. The Shadow MPC is an elite group of independent leading monetary economists.

 

John Pears

Director of Credit Risk, Bank of America

Biography

John Pears is currently the Credit and Operational Risk Executive for Europe Card Services and leads the Risk Management functions for the European consumer portfolios. The European Risk Management Function incorporates Credit Risk Management, Operational Risk Management, Strategic Risk & Analytics, Credit Bureau and Global Risk Assurance functions. He has been in his current position since 2006. In addition, he represents Bank of America on a number of committees within UK banking trade associations and he is the Finance and Leasing Association’s member of the Steering Committee on Reciprocity.

John has previously held management positions in a range of Line Of Business areas such as Card Risk Strategies, Consumer Finance, Small Business and Collections.

Before joining the bank, John worked for the UK Civil Service and H.M. Royal Air Force.  Prior to this he graduated from Liverpool University with a Bachelor of Arts degree, with honours.

John is a keen supporter of local youth development groups and also serves as Chairman of Chester Cathedral Finance Committee.

Bert Pijls

Country Business Manager, UK Consumer, CitiGroup

Biography

Current Position

Bert Pijls is the Country Business Manager for Citi UK Consumer and Chief Executive Officer of Egg.

Citi UK Consumer including Egg has strong retail banking, cards and wealth management franchises, and a workforce of around 2,000 colleagues, 5 branches, over 4 million customer accounts, a strong online banking presence, and market leading brands with Egg and Citibank.

 

Career

Bert joined Citi in early 1990 in Germany as a Management Associate, starting in Financial Control with International Personal Banking. After finishing the MA programme Bert joined Citi’s German retail business and spent six years - with the exception of a one year assignment in Belgium - in the German branch network of which the last three were as District Director for the Gelsenkirchen district. In early 1996 he became Director of Citi’s Direct Banking unit in Aachen, a 24/7 telephone sales unit that had a particular focus on brokerage and investments. He left Citibank Germany in the middle of 1997 to join the Global Marketing department in New York where he worked as a Marketing Director for CitiGold.

 

Bert left Citibank at the end of 1999 to become co-founder of an Internet start-up in retail financial services, called MoneyUnion. After going through both the Internet boom as well as the Internet bust he moved to Egg in 2001. During his three-year stay at Egg he held several senior roles, most notably Product Marketing Director for Credit cards, Loans, Savings and Mortgages. He was then hired in January 2004 by American Express to run their international Lending Business with responsibility for 22 international markets.

 

In early 2005 he re-joined Citi as Country Business Manager for the Czech Republic, a position he held until March 2008 when he moved to the UK. During the 3 years he was in the Czech Republic he helped turn around a loss-making business, resulting in very high top-line growth, and market-leading Customer satisfaction scores.

 

Education

He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Nijenrode University in Breukelen, the Netherlands, and a Master of International Management degree from Thunderbird in Phoenix, Arizona. He is fluent in Dutch, English and German, proficient in French, and understands basic Spanish and Czech.

 

Jaidev Janardana

Senior Director – Operations, Capital One

Biography

Jaidev moved to the UK in 2007 as Head of Credit Risk Management for Capital One Europe (COBEP). In this role, Jaidev was responsible for setting overall credit policy and credit risk appetite COBEP. Additionally, he was accountable for creating the credit loss forecast and justifying it to regulators and the COBEP Board.

In mid 2009, Jaidev moved over to run the Risk Operations department for COBEP, focusing on credit risk mitigation and arrears management.

Before moving to the UK, Jaidev worked for Capital One in the US credit card division. He held various roles in Marketing and Credit Risk focusing on Super Prime and Prime customer acquisition.

Jaidev holds a Masters in Business management degree from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore.

 

Mark Huggins

Director, AA Financial Services

Biography

As Director of Financial Services for the AA, Mark has responsibility for its cards, loans and savings offerings. His particular focus is on developing customer propositions which support the AA’s objectives of serving and rewarding its membership base.

Prior to the AA, Mark held a number of roles at MBNA Europe, including Director of Insurance, Consumer Finance and Business Lending.