Last night we hosted the third of our Cellar Club events – this time in a new ‘Cellar’, the rather impressive vaults at the RSA.  For those of you who asked, the vaults were originally designed as river-front warehouses, presumably by John Adam himself.

Despite our own team being decimated by the rather nasty ‘flu virus going around,  we had a good turnout with colleagues from law, insurance, property, recruitment, accounting, media and financial services represented.  Everyone I chatted with seemed to be busy and cautiously optimistic about the business environment.

Giles Watkins*, from Concentium was our speaker.

His excellent talk on privacy matters was a relaxed (but slightly scary) walk through the world of privacy – in particular how businesses need to be aware of and prepared for the risks of privacy breaches and the increasing vigilance and often severe responses of lawmakers  to such breaches.  Giles cited a number of recent examples of businesses sustaining substantial fines and reputational damage following  almost ‘accidental’ leaks of customer information – incidents that could, seemingly happen to any business at any time.  He also pointed out that there is little consistency across jurisdictions as to how these breaches are regarded by law makers.

Giles finished on a positive note by saying that he believes that ultimately the approach you take should be common-sense based but that businesses can benefit from being prepared through increased brand trust and capability for dealing with complex data issues in a more innovative way.

Thank to all for coming:  our next Cellar Club event will be happening in March 2011 – details to be announced soon.

Ben

*Giles recently founded Concentium, a boutique advisory firm operating on the boundary of business and technology helping organisations to close the chasm between the two. Before Concentium, Giles had a 21 year career in top-tier consulting with Ernst & Young, founding and leading Ernst & Young’s Technology Due Diligence and Post-Transaction Advisory practice, which became the largest such practice in the world.

A big thank you to Tony Angel for leading the conversations at our first ‘Cellar Club’ networking event last night. We all enjoyed his talk on ‘Trust after the banking crisis’ and the difficulties we now face regaining and maintaining trust in the post credit-crunch environment.
Of particular interest was his list of seven points to help organisations regain that trust from their customers and employees. Key to these were exhibiting transparency and integrity, backed up by good corporate governance and regulation.
The other interesting point which emerged from a comparison of his times at Linklaters and now at Standard & Poor’s, was the relative involvement of Partners when compared to the Board members at a corporate. It seems that Partners feel more at liberty to challenge the senior team on issues concerning the running of the firm than do their corporate counterparts. While I am sure there were times when these challenges were awkward to deal with, Tony did comment that it gave him an excellent all-round view of the business at Linklaters.
We’re all looking forward to the next Cellar Club in July and hope you are too!?

“Harry was used to spiders, because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he slept.”

The Dursleys, afraid of Harry Potter’s magical powers, forced him to sleep under the stairs.  When at ‘11 years of age’, he broke free to attend Hogwarts he was amazed to discover his fame…and potential.

Like Harry Potter (but a bit older than 11 for the most part), commercial claims teams have, to a large extent, been kept hidden (sometimes literally), with insurers being fearful of showing too much of the ‘negative’ side of insurance.

Now, however, commercial claims is emerging from the shadows and, if the opportunity is seized, has the potential to change how insurers are viewed forever.  Hiscox has already used claims service to create a compelling and differentiated positioning around its high net worth segment product (“as good as our word”). 

Why have most commercial lines insurers kept claims under wraps?…

Read more »

It seems like a good time to ask.  Most of our clients are beginning to emerge from recessionary trauma: intact but trimmer.  During the tough times, we have all been glad of any work to come our way.  But now there is a growing sense that rebuilding requires focus and that the focus should be on our most important clients.

The problem is that very few firms had well run key client programmes before the recession – even fewer now.  Back then, the obstacles were largely the result of success.  We were all too busy and making good money without the additional burden.

Times have changed. We need a programme that works, and window dressing to tick the “key client” box will not suffice.

There are many reasons why key client programmes fail to deliver.  In a moment, I’ll reflect on our view of the key ingredients for successful programmes.  First though, an observation- something strange has happened!

Most key client programmes fail because they become, or even start as, a burdensome process which fails to bring the client’s voice into the organisation.  In the end, if your key client programme doesn’t make your clients feel more valued, it’s not working.  Numerous clients tell us just that.  They are indifferent to or oblivious of their advisers’ key client programmes.

Here’s the weird thing.  Many of those self same firms also conduct some sort of client research – not always good quality and too often compromised because it’s not independent – but nevertheless they do it.  Somehow the feedback doesn’t link up with the key client process.  They are treated as seemingly different things.

So let’s tear up the old way and put in place some new wineskins here.  The figure shows what we have in mind.

Develop an approach where the key client programme drives proper intelligence gathering.  Part of that (though by no means all) should be independent feedback from the client.  That feedback should be giving the key client team clarity over:

These questions will not be honestly answered if it’s someone within your firm asking them.

And getting the feedback itself is not sufficient. Your firm needs a means of engaging the client team and doing things differently and better than your competitors.

And so our view of the critical success factors:

It’s a short list – and to deliver to it is a longer list of activities. 

But looking at that list, let’s ask again the question we started with:  What state is your key client programme in?

An extract below from one of the topical questions on our Claims Performance Monitor.

Regarding how AIG UK’s name change (to Chartis)  is going down with London brokers.  

There may be some learning here for those who are trying to rebuild trust with business partners.  Maybe a re-brand of RBS will do the trick? I doubt it somehow.

The point about losing global status is obviously important, however one could argue that was a lost cause when AIG was bailed out.

Also, those who say that the old AIG culture will prevail may well have a point – we’ll check back in a few months…

AIG name change presentation.pdf

Hello world!

We’re excited to launch our first official Gracechurch blog.

This blog is still under construction. Soon we hope it will provide you with a deeper insight into our work and who we are – we’re very excited to be out here talking to you!

Keep on the lookout for posts from our team members in the future. If you’re interested RSS feeds are available for all posts or specific categories.

Thanks so much for visiting our blog.

Enjoy!