Date: Thursday 14 September 2017
Venue: Banking Hall, 14 Cornhill, London EC3V 3ND
Back for its second year, It's The Consumer, Stupid! is a must attend event for anyone interested in delivering better financial solutions to their customers.
With a upbeat but challenging tone Holly Mackay will chair the day exploring the present and the future with the help of industry disrupters, start-up challengers, content experts, exciting tech, Ted Talkers and financial Big Wigs.
On the day we'll have live tech demos, consumer thoughts in video, consumer ratings, media, insights on Boring Money’s research and lively panel discussions. The day will feel fast-paced and be fact-packed!
This day will balance the delivery of practical learnings with longer-term challenges and ideas. On the one hand the industry continues to struggle to engage and the ways in which we create content, websites, apps, campaigns and other customer-facing materials needs to evolve and improve. There is a regulatory requirement to 'know your customer' which is hard in an intermediated environment - the day will be full of the latest consumer research, insights and feedback on the newest products, sites and services. This conference also aims to provoke and to throw out challenges as well as provide some potential answers on the latest topics including AI and advice, Robo 'Mark Two', doing well in the social world of 'likes', engaging the unengageable and just what exactly our customers expect from us.
This is a must attend event for all financial firms who are building new products and digital channels with a view to engaging (even delighting!?) the end-customer, whether they are advised or DIY.
Sessions will include:
Boring Money is an independent business which has been set up to help normal people who don't have PhDs in finance make some smart investment decisions quickly and painlessly. The website was set up for anyone who thinks that investments are, well, just a little bit boring. Their mission is to cut through the cr@p, to explain stuff in normal language and to help everyone who has ever felt a bit alienated, patronised or simply cross-eyed and exhausted, to make some good decisions and to get those financial monkeys off your back.
Through the website, social media and research consumers engage with Boring Money. And everything they learn is leveraged for our industry partners and their customers in a virtuous cycle of engagement, measurement and feedback. They help create engagement with their clients customers through fresh content, consumer focused platforms and websites and insights from research. Their clients include Legal & General, BNY Mellon, Zurich, KPMG, BlackRock, Schroders, Alliance Trust Savings, Scottish Widows, Invesco, Franklin Templeton, Aviva, JP Morgan, Vanguard, Evest and the Financial Services Consumer Panel.
Read more about Boring Money here.
MiP are an events and marketing agency specialising in financial services, helping some of the biggest brands in the sector communicate with clients and showcase their products thorough live events, online tools and investment marketing.
Read more about MiP here.
Here's what some of our attendees thought of our 2016 event.
Ian Gorham, Former CEO, Hargreaves Lansdown
Hugo Sparks, Product Manager, Charles Stanley
James Crossley, Head of Retail Distribution, Jupiter Asset Management
Darren Cornish, Director, Customer Experience, The Share Centre.
Emma Napier, True Potential
Fiona Whytock, Senior Media Relations Manager, Aviva
Key takeaways
Customer research: the facts and stats; consumer expectations and the broader tech landscape.
| 09:30 |
An update - the industry and the consumerHolly Mackay, MD, Boring Money will share the latest research and introduce the website content team for the day. |
| 09:50 |
Cross over to our consumer vox pops |
| 09:55 |
Jeremy White, Product Editor, Wired MagazineJeremy will talk us through the latest tech, gadgets and software. How will these impact on the finance industry? |
| 10:35 |
Panel session with new consumer propositions
We'll see their latest launches and hear about the consumer insights that have driven the build and development. |
| 11:05 |
ROBO 2.0: Modelling customer data to offer true AI driven advisory servicesFinancial Marketing expert James Sandberg with look at modelling the key data signals that reveal when a customer's lifestage or circumstances have changed. Data signals that help improve customer experience, retention and customer lifetime value. |
| 11:20 | Coffee break |
Key takeaways
How might the landscape change from both a regulator, a customer and provider point of view.
| 11:35 |
Cross over to our consumer vox pops |
| 11:40 |
Guy Opperman: Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Work and PensionsHolly will interview the new Pensions Minister on how he sees his new role developing and what difference he feels he would like to make. |
| 12:05 |
Industry disrupters: Banks, Bots and BossesWill these new players in the market from the world of start-ups be able to change the way people approach their saving and investing.
|
| 12:35 |
Steven Mendel, Co-Founder of Bought By ManyIt is possible to build a business that has the customer at its centre, even in insurance. Bought By Many has pioneered an approach of building communities of individuals who have distinct insurance needs - Steven Mendel, CEO & Co-Founder, will explain how and why. |
| 13:00 | Lunch |
Key takeaways
Up to date knowledge of what is possible around content, how long good content takes and how much itcosts; the latest thinking from agencies on creative and product design; content marketing and video tips.
| 13:50 |
Podcasts – the lowdown: David Prest, Managing Director of Whistledown David will discuss what are podcasts and how can they help your brand? A producer's view of the dramatic growth and development of downloadable audio (aka podcasts), as well as the latest impact figures, the way brands have imaginatively harnessed their power, and the likely trends in one of the fastest moving and most dynamic of new content platforms. |
| 14:05 |
Mark Leruste: The power of storytelling to grow your businessMark, the founder and host of The Unconventionalists will breakdown the #1 mistake 99% of businesses make when it comes down to engaging with their customers and what we can do in order to stand out from the crowd in a noisy digital world. |
| 14:25 |
Panel session: Telling storiesContent marketing spend in the UK is set to rise 179.2 per cent to £349 million in 2020, from £125 million in 2014, according to a report from Yahoo and Enders Analysis. This rise reflects the increasing appetite of consumers for media and stories and as such reveals a growing opportunity for publishers, advertisers and content creators alike. Our panel discuss their propositions, how to create engaging content for conversion and how to face the challenge of standing out in a cluttered space.
|
| 14:55 |
Video Storytelling |
| 15:05 |
Live cross to tech demo #2 |
| 15:15 |
Coffee break |
Key takeaways:
How to crack consumer engagement; how to apply segmentation research and put this into practice.
| 15:35 |
Tribes: Our Approach |
| 15:45 |
The Big Wig interview with Helena Morrissey, Head of Personal Investing, Legal and General Investment ManagementHolly will interview Helena Morrissey about her new role at LGIM and what she learnt from her time at Newton (a BNY Mellon company), what she'll be implementing at LGIM and who her core audience focus is. |
| 16:15 |
Panel discussion: Our tribesSeth Godin taught us that bringing together a tribe of like-minded people can start a movement and amazing things can happen. These three groups along with Boring Money believe this theory and here they discuss how they have implemented and what it has created.
|
| 16:35 |
Closing thoughtsHolly Mackay, MD, Boring Money gives her closing thoughts on the day with a research re-cap. |
| 16:45 |
Drinks and networking |
Our agenda is subject to change.
Holly Mackay has been working in the investments space since 1998. Until 2007 she worked in both Australia and the UK, for several Global Investment Firms.
In 2008, fed up of working for big financial companies, she set up a business called The Platforum, now one of the UK's most respected financial research firms. She sold the business to Centaur Media in 2011 and left the business in November 2014.
Boring Money is Holly's new venture. Her aim is to help people without PhDs in finance understand the investment markets without jargon, bias or pompous gobbledygook.
Holly is a regular speaker at conferences and is also a seasoned hand at chairing events and hosting panel discussions. She's often asked to engage with the boards of major financial brands who are looking for advice on how to create better products and understand their customers. Holly is also Talk Radio's Business Expert for their Breakfast Show, one of the BNY and ITN Market Mavens and is a regular contributor on Sky News, BBC News, The Sunday Times, The Daily Mail, The Telegraph and The Financial Times.
More information can be seen at www.hollymackay.com.
Jeremy White is the Product Editor at WIRED magazine. He is responsible for the magazine's coverage of all manner of physical products, from smart-home hubs to cars, footwear to phones, drones to interior design. As well as writing and editing WIRED's coverage, Jeremy also consults directly with a wide range of businesses delivering an outside perspective on the latest developments and how products might better be designed. He looks at the very latest in intelligent industrial design and product innovation. By considering how companies create new products, where they get it wrong and right, how technology is applied well and poorly, he helps companies and individuals to understand innovative thinking, how they can adopt it, and how their lives and businesses might change. Jeremy also examines the unexpected ways new innovations are changing established markets and industries by incorporating good design, focusing on the user experience, and only using technology when it adds something. Additionally, as well as WIRED, Jeremy also writes for the Telegraph on all things gadget related and previously worked for the FT and Esquire magazine.
Nick Middleton is a finance professional with an in-depth understanding of the requirements of affluent private clients.
He is one of two co-heads of UBS SmartWealth and uses his wide-ranging expertise to implement investment solutions that help clients meet their goals.
Joining UBS in 2009 Nick initially focused managing private client relationships through the provision of discretionary and advisory investment advice. In 2011 he took on the leadership of the Affluent desk which was set up to manage the accounts for all UBS clients with invested assets of less than £1m. Nick then joined the SmartWealth team in April 2016.
He started work in the City in 1996 for Henderson Crosthwaite. Through a series of mergers that firm became the investment management arm of Investec. During that 12-year period Nick managed portfolios for private clients, corporate entities and charities. Nick is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investments. Before starting his professional career, Nick studied at the University of Plymouth where he graduated in Business Studies.
Jane Warren is CEO of Investec Click & Invest, a new online investment management service for individuals with £10,000 or more to invest, launching later this year. Jane has held several positions across the business over the last twenty years and is leading Investec Wealth & Investment's digital innovation strategy forward.
Steven has over 25 years' deep and diverse experience in the financial services industry - as a qualified actuary at AON, as a strategy consultant at McKinsey, and as a business leader at Barclays Wealth and Close Brothers. Driven by a desire to change financial services for the better, he has previously set up an art finance business for Christie's, and founded an investment consultancy to make asset-based advice available to all pension funds.
Steven founded Bought By Many (www.boughtbymany.com) to shift the balance of power in insurance. He feels strongly that the insurance industry treats corporates better than individuals, and that it's time for that to change. He is disrupting the world of insurance, through the innovative use of search and social media.
Mark is the founder and host of The Unconventionalists, a weekly podcast and web TV show covering entrepreneurship, leadership, courage and vulnerability. He is the author of "It's Not You, It's Me" and has spent the last four years as Country Manager for the Movember Foundation, where he launched and grew the annual campaign across four European countries, raising more than €2.8million for men's health and inspiring 110,000 fundraisers to sign up at Movember.com. Over the years Mark has launched several startups, including Mister-Tailor and Heaven Shakes and his work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Shortlist, The Sunday Telegraph, 20Minutes and Canal+. As an ICF-accredited professional coach with a business background, today, Mark helps organisations such as L'Oreal, INSEAD, Intuit, Oxford Business School, General Assembly and The Clore Social Leadership Programme have a bigger impact by providing one-to-one coaching, leading in person training programmes, delivering talks and workshop. He holds a BSc (Hon) in Business and European Management from the University of Kent and is a Co-Active Leadership Graduate, through The Coaches Training Institute, San Rafael, CA, USA.
Anthony Thomson is the founder and chairman of Atom Bank, founder and chairman of the Financial Services Forum, Chairman of the National Skills Academy for Financial Services, and NED of agilti, a company providing banking software as a service. Atom was granted it's banking licence in June 2015. It launched in March 2016, as the first real alternative to the High Street banks. It is the first full service retail and business bank delivered via an app offering savings, business loans and mortgages, with further products and services to launch during 2017. Previously Anthony was founder of Metro Bank and served as the first chairman from 2009 until 2012, before leaving the bank in December 2012. In 2015 the Evening Standard named him as 'one of the 1000 most influential Londoners'.
Emanuel is co-founder and Chairman of Squirrel, a budgeting and savings account controlled via an App. Previous to Squirrel, Emanuel set up an IT services company, which he grew to over 300 employees and £8m turnover, before successfully exiting in 2013. Having personally experienced the damaging effects of payday lending during a period of financial hardship, Emanuel pledged to make his next venture one that would help end the payday loan market.
He founded Squirrel in 2014 and received government funding through the Innovate UK and Wayra social innovation programmes. The product has since won numerous awards, most recently beating RBS/Natwest to become Best Regular Savings Product in the FairBanking Foundation 2017 review.
Mark Alexander Bogard MA, born 1962, joined the Board of Family Building Society in 2012 as Chief Executive. He has over 20 years' experience in financial services focused on helping people make the most of their money. He ran Barclays' retail funds business and then built up Moneyextra, an aggregator website focused on mortgages and savings that was sold to Bristol & West Plc. Upon its acquisition the business was merged with Chase de Vere and Willis National, two leading IFAs, and Mark was appointed as Managing Director. From 2004 until 2012, Mark was UK Chief Executive of IFG Group plc, responsible for James Hay, the leading SIPP provider, and Saunderson House, an hourly rate financial advisory business. He has an MA from Cambridge University and completed his articles with Slaughter and May before joining Schroders to work in corporate finance. In January 2013 he was appointed as a non-executive Director of Alexander Hall, the leading mortgage broker, whose board meetings he now chairs, which helps him to understand the perspective of the Society’s principal channel for distributing mortgages.
David Prest is the Managing Director of Whistledown, one of the UK's leading radio production companies and podcaster producers. David is a former BBC producer, and founded the company in 1998. Credits include BBC Radio 4's The Reunion and Feedback, NPR's This American Life and My Perfect Country for BBC World Service, as well as podcasts and associated digital content for Glyndebourne Opera, The Open University, brands like Mint Velvet and The Economist and BBC podcasts Seriously, Comedy of the Week & Tomorrow's World.
George Bevis is the CEO at Tide, the mobile-first business banking service; a business he founded in February 2015. Tide launched in January 2017 after raising more than $2m in funding in 2016 from VCs including Passion Capital, Anthemis and Local Globe. Prior to founding Tide, George, an experienced entrepreneur and former banker, previously worked in banking at Capital One, Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclaycard.
George joined Capital One in 2002 as a Business Analyst at Capital One before moving to RBS in 2005 where he became a Manager of Strategy and Planning before becoming Head of Innovation. After leaving RBS, George went on to found SpeedSell.com in 2007 and joined Barclaycard in 2012 where he held positions of Director of Business Strategy, Director of Global Digital Product and finally Director of Wearables Strategy. After leaving Barclaycard George went on to become a Director of Product at Zopa before founding Groovey Bananas, an internet incubator where he stayed for over three years until he founded Tide.
Helena started her career in New York with Schroder Capital Management. After returning to London she joined Newton in 1994 as a junior fund manager and was appointed CEO in 2001. During her fifteen years leading the firm, assets under management grew from £20 billion to over £50 billion.
In 2010, Helena founded the 30% Club, a cross-business initiative to achieve better gender-balanced UK company boards through men and women working together on voluntary actions. These efforts now span the whole career journey from schoolroom to boardroom and the proportion of female directors on UK listed company boards has more than doubled. The 30% Club approach has been adopted internationally, including in the US, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, South Africa, Australia, Canada, Malaysia and the Gulf Co-Operation Countries. Helena also chairs Business in the Community's gender equality campaign, part of the Prince of Wales' Responsible Business network.
Helena has been named one of Fortune Magazine's World's 50 Greatest Leaders. She has twice been voted one of the 50 Most Influential People in Finance globally by Bloomberg Markets. Helena is a Fellow of London Business School and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Cambridge University in 2016. She was made a Dame in the Queen's 2017 Birthday Honours list for her contribution to diversity.
Helena is married to a Buddhist meditation teacher and they have nine children, six girls and three boys whose ages range from 8 to 25.
David has a background in trading, creative solutions, sponsorship and strategic partnerships. In the last 16 years David has worked closely with editorial, commercial and marketing teams at national newspapers to develop ideas and integrated partnerships, brand-led content and multi-media sponsorships on both print pages and their associated digital and mobile platforms.
Evelina Jarbin, Head of Brand Sales & Development, leads brand partnerships for Outbrain, the world’s premium discovery platform.
Originally from Sweden, Evelina has experience working in digital marketing across Europe. For the last 5 years she has been at Outbrain in London, working closely with a wide range of brands running native content marketing campaigns. With a keen interest in advertising and what makes consumers tick, Evelina has been front and center for the content marketing revolution, influencing the kind of strategies being executed by leading financial institutions in the UK and globally, and advocating for a "consumer first" rather than "bank first" approach.
Alex is the former payments lead at Tictail. He joined Tictail as engineer #5, built the platform and team that handled payment processing for 150,000 shops and watched the company grow to 60 people with offices in Stockholm and NYC. Prior to Tictail, he built software for retail data analytics, social networks, sports and Bloomberg. He is also the co-founder of Hack Cyprus, a tech movement in Cyprus which runs hackathons and coding schools for youngsters who want to learn how to code. He has an MEng in Computing from Imperial College London.
Heidi is a business leader, recognised for her thought leadership on the international stage and her career in investment banking, compliance and as a senior figure in one of the largest, global automotive companies – spending 25 years living and working in Russia.
Before co-founding Emerald, Heidi was Executive Director of new business development for General Motors in Russia, one of several positions she’s held globally, spearheading GM’s entry into Russia and becoming a role model for women in the boardroom.
Her track record of growing robust businesses including shaping Chevrolet into the number one selling brand in Russia, growing GM’s P&L to just under half a billion US and supervising over $630 million in investment in Russia, drives her vision for Emerald’s growth and her passion for providing Emerald’s customers with the service and insurance protections they deserve, free from inequality.
As well as having held various board positions for trade bodies and companies, she regularly lectures in business and academic circles.
Educated at John Hopkins University and American University in Cairo, Heidi started her career at Bear Stearns in the emerging markets group, specialising in mergers & acquisitions. A passion of Heidi’s is her love of Russian and British art. She supported the outreach and educational work of the Tretyakov Gallery and was a founding member of AIDS in the Workplace, a group established to help companies in Russia educate management and provide support to people with AIDS.
James is the founder of Customer Devoted, a customer success consultancy focused on digital performance optimisation, customer profitability and customer experience innovation for consumer and institutional financial services brands.
With expertise across performance marketing, customer experience, CRM and customer loyalty, James is obsessed with helping companies achieve their customer based business objectives.
James believes that marketing needs a new paradigm. One where businesses partner with their customers and prospects in a long-term value exchange. To survive the next wave of disruption, organisations need to move beyond marketing operations to become indispensable in the lives of customers whilst leveraging data and technology to drive operational efficiency.
Guy Opperman was appointed as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions on 14 June 2017.
He served as a Government Whip (Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury) from 17 July 2016 to 14 June 2017. He was elected Conservative MP for Hexham in May 2010.
Guy was educated at Harrow School, he went on to read law at the University of Buckingham. He also gained a first class diploma from the University of Lille.
Guy previously served as Private Parliamentary Secretary to Mark Harper, the then Immigration Minister. He served as an Assistant Government Whip from May 2015 until July 2016.
Guy was called to the bar in 1989. He spent 20 years as a barrister and was also Director of his family¹s engineering business until 2009.
Since joining Mindshare in 2014, Stephen has led a number of key accounts including HSBC, Blackrock and the Dept. for Business, Innovation and Skills. An experienced media planner with a strong background in business and financial services, Stephen specialises in delivering meaningful cut-through in advertising campaigns. Over the course of his career, he has successfully established and executed a number of content partnerships across Europe and the UK from both a paid, owned and earned perspective. He is an expert at building, measuring and adjusting metrics in order to create effective media campaigns.
Prior to joining Mindshare, Stephen spent time on both agency and publisher side, more recently having worked at Ptarmigan media for 3 years managing global and local campaigns for key brands like Standard Life.
Ryan Barrows is the Head of Personal Investing, Europe for Vanguard. Ryan leads the team that, earlier this year, launched Vanguard¹s direct investing service in the UK. Before moving to London, he worked in the Corporate Strategy Group at Vanguard¹s headquarters in Pennsylvania. Prior to Vanguard, Ryan was a consultant at Bain & Company in San Francisco, Chicago, and Stockholm. Ryan has a BA in Economics from Yale University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Banking Hall
14 Cornhill
London EC3V 3ND
Directions and more information