The Future of Consumer Finance

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.

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.

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.

Alan Brener

Director of Regulatory Risk Strategy , Santander

Biography

Following his law degree at University College, London, Alan was called to the Bar in 1978 and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with what is now KPMG in 1982. He worked for the Department of Trade and Industry covering, among other things, privatisations.

From 1990 Alan worked in financial services regulation and in 1996 he was appointed Director of Retail Compliance at Nat West Bank and subsequently Royal Bank of Scotland. Alan joined Abbey as Director of Compliance for all the Abbey business at the start of 2006 and is now Director of Regulatory Risk Strategy.

Mayoor Patel

Head of Legal – Unsecured Lending, Lloyds Banking Group

Biography

Mayoor Patel is Head of Legal, Unsecured Lending for the Retail Bank at Lloyds Banking Group. Mayoor previously worked in a variety of in-house roles (Credit Lyonaisse, Lombard Bank, Lloyds TSB) as well at CMS Cameron McKenna. He specialises in consumer credit and retail banking law.

Graham Robinson

Director of Recoveries, Capital One

Biography

11 years extensive financial services experience

- Background in credit decisioning and product design

- Recently redesigned our Financial Difficulties and Hardship Programs to further improve customer experience

Ray Watson

Director, Consumer Credit Group, Office of Fair Trading

Biography

Stuart Sykes

Head of Collections, ICICI Bank UK

Biography

I have been in the Financial Service Industry, mainly in Retail Banking for 13 years. My career started as Lloyds before the merger with TSB in the Credit Card department, during the 7 years at LloydsTSB I engaged in all areas of retail banking from fraud, collections, customer service, training, compliance, BCP and branch services. I have worked for RBS, Nat West as a collections Manager and also for FDI in the multiple collections teams as senior team leader for cross bank collections. I also managed the London Operations for Clear start Consumer Debt service and presently Head collections for ICICI Bank, the second largest bank in India.

Donna Pumfrey

Public Policy Executive, EMEA, Bank of America

Biography

Donna Pumfrey is Public Policy Executive EMEA for Bank of America, where she is responsible for public policy (including trade association representation) for both the wholesale and retail businesses.

Donna joined MBNA in 2000 as Director of Legal and Corporate Affairs.

Before joining the bank, Donna spent 18 years with Barclaycard. At Barclaycard, she held a number of senior positions including In-House Solicitor, Manager of Legal Collections, Manager of Management Development, Head of Human Resources and Head of Legal and Public Affairs.

Donna attended the College of Law in Guildford, UK and qualified as a Solicitor in 1976.

Donna is a Member of the Northamptonshire Probation Board. She is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and has twice been nominated by The Lawyer magazine as one of the UK's 'Hot 100' lawyers (in 2004 and 2006).

Donna is married with two children who both live and work in London.

Ben Coates

Director, Consumer Credit, BIS

Biography

Ben Coates leads the consumer credit team in BIS, responsible for implementing the Consumer Credit Directive and the programme of actions set out in the Government's recent Consumer White Paper. This includes the review of credit cards and store cards, as well as work on Bills of Sale and other proposed reforms to credit regulation. He is also responsible for action against illegal money lenders and the provision of face-to-face debt advice to those in difficulty with their finances. Prior to taking up this role, Ben was Director of Strategy for the Department for Business.

Justin Basini

Former Head of Brand Marketing, Capital One

Biography

Justin is currently CEO of Basini & Company and is exploring several new ventures in the non-profit and business sectors that will launch in 2010. As an award winning marketing leader in the UK Justin is also consulting on several brand and marketing projects. Justin is a popular marketing thinker being a popular contributor to conferences and through his blog (www.blog.basini.com).

Until July 2009 Justin was the Head of Marketing & Customer Initiative Management for Capital One in Europe and sits on the leadership team of Capital One in Europe. Justin runs marketing strategy and execution, brand strategy, proposition and campaign development for Capital One. The focus of the team is delivering highly effective, award winning campaigns that build the business, the brand and achieve commercial objectives.

In 2008 Justin was voted the Financial Services Forum Marketer of the Year and was #1 in the Power 100 of Marketing Direct’s list of most important marketing leaders in the UK for his leadership in environmental marketing issues. Justin was also included in Marketing Magazines “Little Black Book” of leading marketers and in 2007 was one of Marketing Magazine’s Next Generation of Marketing leaders, Justin has written on a range of marketing, branding and channel issues, as well as lecturing at London Business School on Brand Management.

Prior to joining Capital One, Justin led the marketing and communications function of Global Banking at Deutsche Bank. Global Banking comprises the corporate finance, capital markets origination, client coverage and transaction banking businesses of Deutsche Bank. The business employs around 9,500 people and operates in over 42 countries, generating over EUR5bn in revenues.

Justin started his career with Procter & Gamble, working in the European and then Global Health and Beauty Care business on Pantene and then Olay. Justin moved from P&G to join Added Value, the brand and marketing consultancy (part of WPP). Entrepreneurism then called and he led the launch of the London operation of a niche Swedish brand management consultancy called Differ. Whilst a consultant with Added Value and Differ Justin worked on a range of brand and marketing issues for a diverse set of companies and start-ups including Mars, egg, SEB, Telewest, Hyperion Insurance, Shell, World Online and Ericsson.

He has a first class Honours degree in Biochemistry with Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology from the University of Bristol. Justin lives with his wife and three children in London.

Tim Moss

Head of Loans and Debt, Moneysupermarket. com

Biography

Moneysupermarket.com is the UK’s largest price comparison website comparing more products across more channels than any other provider, including money, insurance, travel, vouchers and shopping. Tim Moss has worked for moneysupermarket.com since 2005 and heads up their Loan and Debt channels. Prior to working for moneysupermarket.com, Tim spent four years working for the UK’s largest Financial Services start-up, the Funding Corporation where he looked after joint ventures.

Previously, Tim worked for HBoS looking after unsecured loans join ventures with the AA, Sainsbury’s and Home Shopping.

Tony Levene

Freelance Journalist

Biography

Tony Levene has been a journalist for over 30 years. He focuses on consumer finance issues including banking and insurance. He has worked for a number of national newspapers including The Sunday Times and The Guardian. He is the author of several books including Investing for Dummies, the Which? Guide to Tax, the Which? Money Saving Guide and "How to Avoid Scams".

Melanie Giles

Partner, Jones and Giles

Biography

Melanie Giles is a Licensed Insolvency Practitioner and the Managing Director of a group of four specialist companies providing a variety of tailored debt solutions to personal and corporate clients across the UK.

Melanie’s early career was spent with PricewaterhouseCoopers, qualifying as an Insolvency Practitioner in 1996. In 2002 Melanie set up her own practices of JonesGiles and Philip Gill & Co with two ex-colleagues. Her third venture, the IVA Advice Bureau, was established at the beginning of 2007 to provide a specialist IVA firm which still had the values and client-service of more traditional methodology, with a bespoke Scottish company being established in 2008.

Melanie’s businesses are run with a common ethos; clients are individuals and therefore the solutions we find for them are individual solutions. Melanie is very proud to be at the forefront of quality client-service in an industry which is often accused of being more focused on revenue rather than results. Shortlisted for Insolvency Practitioner of the Year in 2008, Melanie is a regular contributor to a number of media and internet based advice outlets.

Contact Melanie Giles on 02920-346532 and 07713 739583 or melaniergiles@jonesgiles.co.uk

Beverley Budsworth

Managing Director, The Debt Advisor

Biography

Beverley Budsworth is an insolvency practitioner with over 25 years’ experience in dealing with debt issues, including 17 years with Deloitte specialising in personal and business insolvency.

She established The Debt Advisor in 2000, one of the first firms to offer comprehensive advice on all debt issues. In 2004 and 2007, she was asked to join a number of government-led working parties to look at ways of simplifying the formal debt procedures. She continues to work with several of the leading professional organisations in the sector and is a member of the Insolvency Practitioners Association, Personal Insolvency Committee, R3 and a board member of the Debt Resolution Forum.

Bev’s work has received industry acclaim winning both Credit Today’s ‘Debt Counsellor of the Year’ 2008 and ‘Personal Insolvency Practitioner of the Year’ 2008 (shortlisted in 2009).

Jonathan Crook

Director, CRC, Edinburgh University

Biography

Jonathan Crook is the Director of the Credit Research Centre at the University of Edinburgh (http://www.crc.man.ed.ac.uk) and Professor of Business Economics. He is the joint author/editor of several books, including: Readings in Credit Scoring, OUP 2004, Credit Scoring and its Applications, SIAM 2002, and Credit Scoring and Credit Control, OUP 1992. He has published a large number of papers relating to credit in many different academic journals. He is a Fellow of the Wharton Financial Institutions Center, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and has been a postdoctoral Fulbright Scholar at the University of Virginia and a Visiting Fellow at other universities. He organises the Credit Scoring and Credit Control conference, the next conference being 24-26 August 2011.

Peter Tutton

Social Policy Officer, Citizens Advice Bureau

Biography

Peter Tutton has been a social policy officer at Citizens Advice since 2004. Peter works on issues around debt, credit and other financial services . Peter co-wrote the Citizens advice report on payment protection insurance that lead to the 2005 super-complaint. more recently Peter has written on mortgage arrears, debt enforcement and worked on numerous aspects of credit and debt regulation'.

Lucian Camp

Principal, Lucian Camp Consulting

Biography

Lucian has worked on the creative side of brand, marketing and advertising agencies for over 30 years, initially as a copywriter and subsequently as a creative director and agency chairman. For well over half that time he has specialised in the financial services market. Recently, he has begun a second and parallel life as a one-man consultancy working in the same area.

William Thomson

Director of Global Economics, Experian

Biography

William Thomson is Director of Economics at Experian. He has worked for many years to help some of the world’s leading private sector organizations understand how economic change will impact on their business portfolios. At Experian, he is responsible for global macroeconomic and regional analysis and forecasting. He is currently leading Experian’s initiative to apply economic forecasts and analysis to portfolio risk analysis and in particular forecasting future portfolio losses.

Prior to that he was Managing Director of European Economics at Global Insight and Vice President of European Fixed Income Research at Merrill Lynch. William has also worked for the portfolio risk management division of the UK Export Credit Agency (ECGD). He holds degrees from the University of Essex in the UK and a PhD from the University of Connecticut in the USA.

Chris Oakes

Chief Executive , Consumer Credit Trade Association (CCTA)

Biography

Biography of Chris Oakes FICM Chief Executive of the Consumer Credit Trade Association (CCTA)

Chris Oakes has spent more than 30 years managing high volume Consumer Credit environments

Chris Oakes is the Chief Executive of the Consumer Credit Trade Association (CCTA). Chris has been in this role since June 2005 since he took over from Keith Mather the former Director General of the CCTA. Chris has been involved with the CCTA over many years serving on various committees including Membership and Services where he was the Chairman. More recently Chris has been a Member of the CCTA Council and prior to becoming Chief Executive he was Chairman of the Council.

Prior to joining the CCTA Chris was the Group Director of Credit for Courts PLC for 10 years with International responsibilities for Credit Management in 20 countries around the World. The company traded internationally offering Consumer Credit facilities in the Caribbean, the Far East, Asia Pacific and the Indian Ocean. This generated huge customer data bases in many of the countries and in some cases the largest customer data bases in the country. In this role Chris was responsible for introducing modern Credit Management procedures including Credit Scoring and Collections procedures. Chris was fortunate during this time to have to visit many countries in these parts of the world on a regular basis and made significant improvements to the quality of the portfolios and customer service.

Chris was responsible for Credit at Norweb Retail prior to his time with Courts and before spent many years looking after Credit for Rumbelows. He was one of first lenders to implement the Autoscore Credit Scoring system into the retail market of the UK High Street.

Chris has been a Member of the Institute of Credit Management since 1979 and a Fellow since 1988. He is also a member of the Australian Institute of Credit Management.

Chris was born in Manchester and lived most of his life in the North West. He then moved to Sussex and spent 10 years living in the South of England. Returning to the North for his present role 18 months ago he now lives in his adopted county of West Yorkshire. He has three children and enjoys sport particularly football and is a big Man U fan.