Apex delivers Fund Management, Banking and Financial Solutions. The company manages over £1.5 trillion in assets across 86 countries with over 5000 colleagues.
Technology Integration Lead (Interim)
• Charged to manage the initial preparation for the technology integration of Apex and a new acquisition Sanne Group. Sanne Group were a FTSE 250 company with nearly 2500 employees.
• I put in place appropriate plans to ensure the smooth delivery of change required in month 1 post completion
• Delivery of governance and processes to support the integration plans post close ensuring the selection of the best platform for the group long term.
• Ensured the teams were resourced to deliver the changes required.
• Following completion of this I handed back the delivery tasks to the Apex integration team.

• Implemented a new IT and Change ToM, reduced costs by 15% and extended the use of data and digital.
• Became COO in 2019 to improve member service and deliver a more streamlined service.
• Given the market and solvency challenges I led a review with the FD to assess the long-term options for the group.
• Ultimately, we agreed to seek a merger with Royal London which was agreed with the Managing Board, members and regulators. Once agreed we delivered and implemented a plan to deliver a stable business safely into Royal London that took effect on 1/10/20. I was a key leader ensuring this happened whilst leading a large number of colleagues through the change.
• Given the Covid-19 challenges I led the incident response team to get colleagues working from home. We moved all 420 colleagues to home working within two days and within two weeks had agreed a number of changes to allow longer term home working. This is likely to become a more permanent working pattern.
• I was an active participant in all Board meetings, Risk and Audit committees.

• Spectris had started a full IT transformation programme across 12 group companies supported by Microsoft to modernise the group and remove 30% of IT costs.
• The programme lost confidence of the Group Executive team and divisional MDs after missing numerous milestones and incurring significant spend.
• I reviewed the programme with the divisional IT Directors and recommended and subsequently implemented a revised approach covering IoT, Security, Cloud and Data reducing the delivery cost by 60% and focussing on the key deliverables. This was fully supported by the Group Executive team and the divisional MDs.

• Delivered an IT strategy to support the Board in stabilising and de-risking Furness after significant issues.
• Delivered an end to end Digital solution to support savings growth aspirations.
• Implemented a significant upgrade in Cyber capabilities and Disaster Recovery.
• I was a regular attendee in Board meetings, Risk and Audit committees.

Led the business through a fast paced and dynamic delivery working with off-shore partners, delivering new digital and data services, remove legacy and costs. Business growth was 20% pa over this period.

• Worked with the Board and Executive to deliver an IT and Change strategy supporting the growth agenda.
• Definition and delivery of a data led business strategy; delivering a single customer view, CRM and datawarehouse, data driven Marketing solution that was delivering 10% of the company’s income within 2 years of delivery. Benefits were 20% more than plan
• Definition and Implementation of Digital and IT Strategies to support a more active customer usage of the website which doubled customer traffic.
• Reduction in the IT Opex of 20% within the first 12 months.
• Active sponsorship of 10 acquisitions which were managed and integrated into Police Mutual. Both PwC and E&Y both complimented us on the IT strategy to support the acquisitions and larger group.
• Delivery of a Modernisation Programme using CRM to deliver a customer centric sales and service operation with high degrees of automation. Benefits realisation was 300% higher than plan after 1 year.
• Led a review of the existing Cyber security to ensure Police and Military data remained safe. These were presented to the Managing Board and an action plan put in place to improve the controls and monitoring.
• Delivery of a new Life platform with a Digital by Default goal to provide a highly automated, efficient and flexible platform for the long-term Life business.
• Implementation of numerous cost reduction changes incluing; moving the telephony to SIP, virtualisation of the IT estate, Cloud migration and implementation of robotics including RPA.
• Active participation in all Managing Boards, Audit and Risk Committees and Regulator interactions.

• Developed a proposal to consolidate 52 contact centres into 4 separate groups.
• Defined the optimum delivery roadmap which delivered 80% of the benefits for 20% of the cost. The £2m solution allowed a faster, lower risk delivery resulting in the delivery of Shared Services function into Boots to rationalise 52 contact centres significantly reducing costs.

• Accountable for all Project change activity in the company from inception to live totalling over £30m.
• Delivery of the integration of the YBS and Chelsea ensuring projects met agreed success criteria.
• Creating a new senior management team, establishing a strategic relationship with TCS and bringing in over 120 permanent and contract staff to support the change portfolio.
• Implemented stronger governance to ensure better controls, improved project definition and requirements, more appropriate testing and faster development of code and turnaround of defects.
• Helped the company to deliver 12 key regulatory and transformation projects to time and budget without impacting the integration programme.

• Established an assurance team focused on the banking migration to migrate over 30m customers to the target operating environment.
• Delivered controls and clear stakeholder management to ensure that the impacts of the migration were understood and risks were addressed as appropriate. This was agreed with key senior stakeholders.

2007 - 2009 IT Director

Lifetime - recovery of a failing business. Led the turnaround to resolve severe issues with the IT operation and the change programme including realigning suppliers, contracts and the ToM. The projected cost for 2008 was £40m; after the changes I implemented this was delivered for £33.6m.

2006 - 2007 Head of Distribution Change

Led the Distribution Change department which included the delivery of a major new distribution deal between NU and Post Office. This programme was in the top 3 changes in Aviva in 2006.

2006 Ecommerce Programme Manager

Delivered a portfolio of projects to enhance to digital channel for NU.

2005 - 2006 Pension Programme Manager

Responsible for the implementation of a major change programme to deliver a new business model into Norwich Union Life required as a result of de-polarisation.

2003 - 2005 Programme Manager (Basel II)

Delivery of the Basel II programme including a data-warehouse covering retail bank’s lending products, with risk models managing the banks risks and capital allocations.

2002 - 2003 Head of Change

Recovered the Customer merger programme with BoS. Programme of 6 projects and was a critical path delivery for the Halifax and BoS merger delivering an annual cost reduction of £6.5m.

2001 - 2003
Business Systems Manager
Led portfolio of projects which delivered an operational single customer view with guaranteed lending offers, the result was a 4% uplift in sales in 2004.

2000 - 2001 Development Manager (Ecommerce)

Responsible for the implementation of the Halifax online platform.

1997 - 2000 Project Manager

Various Projects to deliver Products and Finance Capability for Retail Bank.

Delivery of reporting for distribution and monitoring IT networks

Supported the development of a number of mortgage projects