Wesleyan December 2020 by Business Chief Europe

BRIGHTER FINANCIAL FUTURES THROUGH DIGITAL TECH IN ASSOCIATION WITH

WESLEYAN

DIGITAL REPORT 2020

BRIGHTER FINANCIAL FUTURES THROUGH DIGITAL TECH

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WESLEYAN ASSURANCE SOCIETY

DAVID STEWART, GROUP CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, DESCRIBES HOW THE COMPANY’S DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS UNLOCKING EXCITING OPPORTUNITIES FOR TRUSTED PROFESSIONALS

n uncertain times, the benefit of a strong and enduring financial institution can be invaluable to maintaining the wellbeing

of communities. Wesleyan Assurance Society (Wesleyan) is a Birmingham-based company founded in 1841 that, across its long heritage, has 04

survived two world wars, several global depressions, the 2008 financial crisis, and is currently weathering the storm of COVID-19. In all that time, and despite the difficulty, its dedication to “creating brighter financial futures” for trusted professionals, including doctors, dentists, teachers and lawyers, has remained robust, unshaken and secure. Group Chief Operating Officer David Stewart’s journey with Wesleyan began in April 2019, when he joined as Technology & Transformation Director, rising to his present role five months later. Originally trained as a chemist, Stewart found that his true passion lay in business, “I had my first foray in financial services back in 2008 when I joined what was HBOS, which was taken over by Lloyd’s in a matter of weeks.” Rising steadily to a

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Lenovo: Partners in productivity Rob Makin, WW Executive Director, Lenovo Device as a Service, explains how Modern IT can secure success and stability amid a market of uncertainty “We had to move very quickly when COVID-19 struck,” says Rob Makin. Makin, who has spent the past 25 years leading IT sales and business teams across Europe and APAC, is closing in on six years at Lenovo. There he heads up the worldwide Device as a Service (DaaS) business, helping companies adapt their IT infrastructure to empower employees and move away from the outmoded CapEx model. “This basically entails us managing the full life cycle of their devices,” Makin explains, likening it to a “mobile phone experience” requiring little input on the part of the end user. Lenovo handles distribution of devices - in the office or, more frequently these days, at home - remotely testing, loading software and preferences, and managing any issues or updates along the way. At the end of the chosen contract period, Lenovo collects the device, closing the loop. “From a productivity point, it’s a huge advantage; from an experience point, it’s a huge advantage, particularly when we are working from home and don’t have that IT specialist to go to,” Makin explains. Overhauling legacy IT systems “can take months or years,” he says, but a partnership approach “works best.” Lenovo has a close partnership with financial services leader Wesleyan. “We’re very proud of our relationship at Wesleyan. It’s very much a cohesive team, which makes the support of their workplace environment a simple thing. We also deliver predictability of cost, something that was important before the pandemic and is now even more vital for organisations.”

Rob Makin @ Lenovo

Lenovo DaaS ensures stability in user experience and cost-age at Wesleyan, but Makin says the two firms are collaborating on further transformations for the post-COVID market. “We are talking to Wesleyan about how we can implement Lenovo Device Intelligence, our predictive and proactive analytics, across their devices,” Makin says. “This means rather than a device having errors or faults, whether it be software or hardware, we want to be able to predict when it’s going to have an issue.” This flexibility will be key to the future success of businesses, says Makin. “And that’s certainly what we at Lenovo DaaS believe in; what we are developing and expanding to is to really look at Modern IT low-touch as a service. We want to really accelerate and support enterprises and the businesses moving forward as we come out of the pandemic.” lenovo.com/daas

WESLEYAN ASSURANCE SOCIETY

“ I WAS PARTICULARLY ATTRACTED TO THE COMPANY’S LONG HERITAGE: WE’RE NOT HERE TO MEET SHORTTERM SHAREHOLDER GOALS; WE’RE HERE TO DELIVER VALUE FOR OUR MEMBERS AND CUSTOMERS” — David Stewart, Group Chief Operating Officer, Wesleyan

our members and customers. That’s a goal I buy into wholeheartedly.”

number of executive positions within

Stewart states that he brings

the company, he relates that, when he

three aspects of his career outside

first heard about Wesleyan, he was

of finance (primarily retail and sales)

immediately drawn to its culture, his-

to bear on his role as COO: customer-

tory and the opportunities it presented.

centricity, colleague focus and

“I was particularly attracted to the

commerciality. Although Wesleyan’s

company’s mutual heritage: we’re not

consistent capital strength has been

here to meet short-term shareholder

key to its enduring success, its will-

goals; we’re here to deliver value for

ingness to adapt its services to the

changing needs of its clients has

across executive leadership,” Stewart

been equally important: “Our financial

explains, including a new CEO, COO

consultants meet our customers day-

(Stewart himself), Chief Distribution

to-day and we also get a lot of insights

Officer and, most recently, a new Chief

from professional advisory boards.”

Financial Officer. “We are confident

This willingness to evolve even per-

that we are set up for the next phase

meates the structure of the C-suite:

of Wesleyan’s development.” This

“We’ve had a significant change

refers to the company’s accelerated

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

David Stewart Title: Chief Operating Officer

Company: Wesleyan Assurance Society

Industry: Financial Services

Location: Birmingham

David Stewart joined Wesleyan in April 2019 and became Group Chief Operating Officer in August. He has responsibility across Wesleyan for Change & Transformation, Technology, Cyber Security, Data & Analytics, Customer Operations, Procurement and Workplace Services. Prior to joining Wesleyan, David spent over 10 years at Lloyds Banking Group in a number transformation and operational roles, latterly as Chief Operating Officer for the Group Services division. Before joining Lloyds, David’s career spanned retail (Asda), FMCG (Mars) and telecommunications (Phones4U). This broad experience has been the foundation for David’s passion to deliver lasting change which benefits customers and colleagues. www.we sl e y a n . co. u k

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THE BANKING CLOUD PLATFORM FOR GROWTH The spring of 2020 certainly wouldn’t be the optimal time to pick for a complex migration of a banking system’s IT infrastructure into the cloud. In recognition of UK financial services being tightly regulated, Wesleyan was looking for a secure cloud platform to fuel business transformation and growth. Blue Chip Cloud has an enviable collection of accreditations, which has enabled banking, wealth management and pharmaceutical companies to innovate within tight and ever-changing regulations Traditionally, financial services organisations have looked upon cloud moves in a conservative manner due to regulatory pressures and perceived risks. When these combine with complex IT infrastructure it can be difficult to see a way forward. Blue Chip Cloud is a game changer for the finance industry, who will often have a mixture of infrastructure to include traditional Windows and Linux environments, and the rock-solid IBM platforms such as IBM i, AIX and z/OS mainframe. A cloud transition for Wesleyan Bank had long been scheduled for Easter Bank Holiday weekend, a month into the toughest phase of national lockdown in the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to careful planning with Wesleyan the transition into the Blue Chip Cloud was smooth and seamless. The delivery was carried out completely remote during lockdown, removing risk to all involved. All of the Intel and AIX estate moved over, with Blue Chip managing the operating system, backups and the disaster recovery solution, while securely hosting some additional infrastructure that’s not cloud ready. • 10% of the 157 UK banks hosted • £150bn+ funds under management hosted • 800 clients receive business critical services

COMPLIANCE IN THE CLOUD The security accreditations held by Blue Chip are at the highest level, holding four ISO certifications which are audited annually by a UKAS-accredited body. The company also undergoes an annual independent review of Service Organisation Controls (SOC). Blue Chip holds the highest standard for compliancy with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard - PCI-DSS Level 1. In addition to banks; famous retailers and supermarkets are customers, as this compliance covers online payments and card data.

“ We have many highly regulated customers in the Blue Chip Cloud under FCA and EBA parameters. As their key service provider, we help these customers meet their regulatory requirements by demonstrating our business and compliance maturity.” Derek Waterman Chief Compliance Officer, Blue Chip Blue Chip gives financial services organisations assurance they can meet regulatory requirements. The continual improvement ethos and transparency enables the IT specialists to continually support their clients’ journey with their regulators. KEEPING SECURE IN THE CLOUD The Blue Chip Cloud is underpinned by industryleading security vendors to build enterprise-class hardware and software solutions, with the availability, reliability and security demanded by the financial services industry. We’re widely recognised as a highly secure home for global financial data, handling a substantial amount of the UK’s banking traffic and removing the risks associated with a move into the cloud.” Tim Stringer Chief Information Security Officer, Blue Chip CONTINUED ASSURANCE While reliability, agility and security are at the heart of the Blue Chip Cloud, another factor that makes Blue Chip a destination for companies that operate across 180 countries, is the consistency to deliver, even during a global pandemic. Delivering any new cloud project throughout a pandemic is an achievement, maintaining a level of support is another achievement all together. So, we close with a statement from their long-term banking software vendor who partner with Blue Chip to deliver services for multiple clients: “Blue Chip were equally as responsive and reliable as they were prior to the pandemic, when, for example, we put in a request to troubleshoot a particular hardware failure. The mobilisation of the virtual team at Blue Chip with our own virtual team was consistent, quick and everything we would have wanted it to have been.”

WESLEYAN ASSURANCE SOCIETY

“ O UR APPROACH IS TO FIRST IDENTIFY WHAT THE ‘END STATE’ OR TARGET CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IS THAT WE WANT TO DELIVER” — David Stewart, Group Chief Operating Officer, Wesleyan

two-year transformation journey, which aims to “raise the bar” of service delivery for customers. 12

Diversifying the company’s channel offerings has been an integral part of its tech transformation. Part of this focuses on customer-centric opera-

we want to deliver. What do we need to

tions: Wesleyan has been pursuing

bring into the organisation, and where

omnichannel capabilities to bring

can we find efficiencies and smarter

freedom of choice to an increasingly

ways of doing things, either by develop-

diverse client base. Although it’s often

ing capabilities in-house, calling on third

easier to adapt services in theory

parties where needed, or introducing

than practice, due to the increasingly

automation to certain processes.”

nuanced value of customer-centricity,

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)

Stewart states that the company is

is one of Wesleyan’s key partners

employing a relatively simple method

on developing a new tech strategy,

to ensure its roadmap for innovation

particularly with an increased empha-

is correctly drawn: “Our approach is

sis on data and analytics. Stewart

to first identify what the ‘end state’ or

explains: “PwC has been instrumental

target customer experience is that

to us building our ‘data warehouse’.

From that, we’ve started to deliver use cases to the business, such as our customer intelligence dashboards that are now being used by all of our financial consultants to gain better insights into customers’ needs. Importantly, PwC is also supporting us as we develop our ‘cyber maturity’; we’re making good progress on our journey to enhance the protection that we can offer.” Additionally, Stewart references Bluechip, Lenovo and Softcat as “key partners who are helping to drive Wesleyan’s digital transformation journey.”

Wesleyan - We are all about you CLICK TO WATCH

2:28

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Change how you see digital transformation Digital transformation is about more than technology. We are working with Wesleyan to create a culture of innovation that embraces change, seeks imaginative ways to do business and uses data to unlock opportunity. Together, we are developing a more resilient business, able to move at speed and adapt to change while delivering great customer experience. Find out how we can help you achieve your transformation goals, contact: Justin Murphy Transformation Partner justin.murphy@pwc.com

Sultan Mahmood Financial Services Partner sultan.mahmood@pwc.com

32589_RITM3840574_Wesleyan advert_v3.indd 4

13/10/2020

0 07:33

“ YOU CAN HAVE THE MOST FANTASTIC DIGITAL INTERFACE YOU WANT, BUT IF THE INFRASTRUCTURE BEHIND THAT ISN’T ROBUST THEN IT’S BUILT ON QUICKSAND” — David Stewart, Group Chief Operating Officer, Wesleyan

robust then it’s built on quicksand.” Stewart points to Wesleyan’s successful migration of its data centre, which

This touches on an important aspect

occurred over the Easter weekend

of digital transformation, not just for

in the height of lockdown. For most

Wesleyan but generally: if the funda-

organisations, data centre migrations

mentals aren’t right, neither will the

are among the most complex tech-

rest. “We are putting a lot of invest-

nology projects to deliver, and this

ment behind our IT resilience and

was no exception for Wesleyan. “The

cybersecurity; those are absolutely

implementation touched every single

essential. You can have the most fan-

area of our technology estate, much

tastic digital interface you want, but

of which was highly complex and

if the infrastructure behind that isn’t

incredibly frail.” Another example of

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WESLEYAN ASSURANCE SOCIETY

16 Wesleyan’s approach includes starting

opened Wesleyan’s eyes to the fact

to incorporate robotic process auto-

that we can still be effective remotely.

mation (RPA) in customer operations.

Quite frankly, the idea of having flex-

Although the digital transformation of

ibility between home and the office

Wesleyan was already firmly underway

is hugely attractive, although some

prior to the lockdown imposed by the

employees find working entirely from

pandemic, it is safe to say that the cir-

home difficult.” This latter point is vital,

cumstances have shaped its progress.

he explains, as another crucial legacy

Shifting from an office-centric organi-

of COVID-19 has been the company’s

sation to a more flexible and remote

renewed emphasis on supporting the

operating model, Stewart is confident

mental health and wellbeing of its staff.

that the revised work paradigms will be

Support is something that Wesleyan

both enduring and ultimately beneficial,

truly believes in: its reach extends past

both to employees and customers.

customers, members and employ-

“Providing everyone with laptops has

ees and actually touches the fintech

W E S L E YA N - A F O R C E F O R S O C I E TA L G O O D

In addition to the work it does for professionals in a financial capacity, Stewart highlighted that the company is a staunch advocate of equality, inclusion and diversity. Acting as ‘gender network sponsor’ for Wesleyan, he states the definite progress being made to balance representation of women in senior leadership roles: “I’m very proud to be the gender network sponsor. Since 2018 we’ve increased the number of women in our senior leader population from 18% to 30%. We’re still not where we want to be, but we have numerous initiatives that are driving that agenda forward.” Regarding the company’s efforts to assist communities and individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic, Stewart also highlights its

free-to-access, 24/7 healthcare and wellbeing support hub, Wesleyan Wellbeing. “The online service offers a free psychological triage, and access to specialist mental health clinicians for our members. Through the Wesleyan Foundation, we have also gifted over £100k to various charities and organisations in support of key worker mental health needs.” In September, despite the economic downturn, Wesleyan paid out its highest-ever mutual bonus to members: a £30m dividend to customers invested in its profits fund, with each investor receiving a 1% uplift on the value of their investment. As a testament to its financial strength, the Society has paid out over £67m to members over the past three years in the form of mutual dividends.

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1841

the events of March slowed things down a bit.” Providing a valuable col-

Year founded

laboration space in the heart of the

1,530

workstations, numerous breakout

Number of employees

city, the initiative features over 30 areas and an auditorium. Significantly, it also provides the West Midlands of England with its own fintech cluster, something which had been lacking. “I think it’s great that Wesleyan is able

community. It achieves this through

to play its part in helping the local

its ‘The Engine Room’ initiative at

economy. One of the barriers to entry

Colmore Circus, Birmingham. “The

for fintech startups is simply having

Engine Room is a state-of-the-art

access to a physical environment that

fintech hub,” Stewart explains. “It was

is conducive to growth.”

launched in November 2019 and built up a fantastic head of steam until

Maintaining the same vision that has seen it prevail in the market for almost www.we sl e y a n . co. u k

WESLEYAN ASSURANCE SOCIETY

“ I SAID WHAT ATTRACTED ME TO WESLEYAN WAS THE OPPORTUNITY IT PRESENTED. I’M 18 MONTHS INTO THE ROLE NOW AND ABSOLUTELY STILL FIRMLY BELIEVE IN OUR MESSAGE” — David Stewart, Group Chief Operating Officer, Wesleyan

180 years, Wesleyan will continue to partner on projects with companies that demonstrate the same integrity, impact and committed work ethic it exemplifies. Part of its continued vision is an adherence to its individual mission and purpose: creating brighter financial futures for the professions we all trust. “We will remain a segment specialist because it’s the right thing for our customers and our business,” Stewart explains. “We are not a massmarket player. Rather, we cater to our customer groups in a very focused and appropriate way.” Wesleyan’s ongoing transformation, combined with a well-crafted product range and awardwinning investment funds, appears to form a strategic roadmap geared for success. That success will belong not only to the company and its staff but also to its customers, whose vital work is needed now more than ever. “I said what attracted me to Wesleyan was the opportunity it presented. I’m 18 months into the role now and absolutely still firmly believe in our message.”

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