{"id":1906,"date":"2014-06-30T13:22:38","date_gmt":"2014-06-30T13:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/robarts.com\/blog\/?p=1906"},"modified":"2014-06-30T19:41:45","modified_gmt":"2014-06-30T19:41:45","slug":"re-david-nish-about-transforming-standard-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/robarts.com\/blog\/re-david-nish-about-transforming-standard-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Re David Nish about transforming Standard Life \/"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE INTERVIEW: Jeff Prestridge speaks to David Nish about transforming Standard Life.
\n__________________________________________________________________
\nBy Jeff Prestridge.
\nUpdated: 21:54, 12 September 2010. <\/p>\n

Standard Life Wealth<\/a><\/p>\n

David Nish (CEO)<\/a><\/p>\n

Podcast from Richard Charnock.<\/a> <\/p>\n

Richard Charnock (CEO)<\/a><\/p>\n

Rory Montgomerie (Client Portfolio Manager)<\/a><\/p>\n

Social Network Facility.<\/a><\/p>\n

They’re knocking down the offices on the executive floor of Standard Life\u2019s headquarters on Lothian Road, Edinburgh.<\/p>\n

The demolition is all part of chief executive David Nish\u2019s plan to turn the 185-year-old financial giant \u2013 six million customers and \u00a3179 billion of assets \u2013 into a more open organisation. He is fond of the word \u2018transformation\u2019.<\/p>\n

It is his first interview since taking over less than a year ago from Sandy Crombie, the man who steered the business through a difficult demutualisation in 2006.<\/p>\n

New broom: David Nish is the force behind a catalogue of dramatic changes at Standard Life’s Edinburgh HQ.<\/p>\n

It was a bold appointment by a board that in the past had always opted for actuaries who were company \u2018lifers\u2019 such as Crombie, Iain Lumsden and the late Scott Bell.<\/p>\n

Nish, 51, is not an actuary (and is pleased to let people know) but an accountant who had worked at Standard Life for only three years before formidable chairman Gerry Grimstone gave him the top job and told him to bring the company into the Brussels threat to merchant navy defiant: The Red Duster flag of the merchant navy age.<\/p>\n

Nish comes from Glasgow \u2013 and still lives there with wife Caroline \u2013 which makes him an even bigger \u2018outsider\u2019. \u2018I\u2019m from the wrong side of Scotland,\u2019 he says. He\u2019s been married 27 years and has two children, both at university.<\/p>\n

Judging by the physical changes at HQ, Nish\u2019s wish for corporate glasnost is being put into action. Out are large executive offices with oak doors. In comes open plan. \u2018I will have an eighth of the space Sandy had,\u2019 he says with pride. \u2018When I joined I had to walk 50 yards before I could find another colleague.\u2019<\/p>\n

Out also is the absurd policy requiring staff to enter the building through the basement, leaving the front reception for clients and the company executives.<\/p>\n

Nish, a former PricewaterhouseCoopers partner and finance director of ScottishPower, has also got rid of the rule which reserves the top floor for board meetings and hospitality.<\/p>\n

\u2018Someone deemed that staff could never be located above the executives, but that\u2019s ending,\u2019 he says. \u2018We\u2019re turning the floor over to staff training.\u2019<\/p>\n

However, 600 staff \u2013 480 at headquarters \u2013 have been axed as part of a \u00a3100 million cost-cutting programme. The revolving door has also caught a dozen top executives, though Nish has made an equal number of senior appointments from within and externally.
\nNish says this is necessary to make the company leaner and more nimble. \u2018Standard Life is like a dam\u2019, he explains. \u2018There is pent-up energy behind it. We need to remove the bricks to allow the energy to flow. There is a lot of skill in this organisation but it\u2019s underdeveloped.<\/p>\n

\u2018We don\u2019t need new ideas. We need to speed up our metabolic rate, improve the lead time it takes to get products to market, generate a stronger performance culture within the organisation and work out how we can best create shareholder value driven off doing best for our customers.\u2019<\/p>\n

The executive team has been shaken up to let individuals take decisions. \u2018I can\u2019t make them all. We\u2019ve got good people here but they\u2019ve never been allowed to do things,\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n

\u2018Only last week, Ronnie Collard, head of customer service, said to me, \u201cAt last I can get on with the issues I\u2019ve wanted to tackle for the past 20 years but have never been allowed to do.\u201d I need to mobilise all 10,000 staff to make decisions.\u2019<\/p>\n

Then, rather surprisingly, he says: \u2018I\u2019m not running an insurance company. We\u2019re a long- term savings and investments business. I want to distance ourselves from being viewed as an insurer \u2013 of being slow, not consumer-oriented and not understanding the long-term savings market.\u2019<\/p>\n

Nish says regulatory change, Government policy and the impact of the financial crisis means that the focus of the next decade will be savings, not insurance. <\/p>\n

\u2018We must construct appropriate savings and investment vehicles to help people accumulate for retirement,\u2019 he says. \u2018If we do this, Britain can be a genuinely exciting place for Standard Life to do business.\u2019<\/p>\n

Nish says the company\u2019s thriving asset management arm will help it. The business has been boosted by the recent acquisition of hedge fund specialist Aida Capital and a tie-up with Japanese bank Chuo Mitsui.<\/p>\n

Nish is also keen to break the company\u2019s long-standing dependency on financial advisers. Although he intends to give advisers all the support they need to make the jump from being paid by commission to being fee-charging \u2013 a regulatory requirement \u2013 he wants to explore other sales avenues, such as direct to the customer and through employers.<\/p>\n

\u2018I want to bring the outside world into Standard Life,\u2019 he says. \u2018We\u2019re doing something we\u2019ve never done before, which is talk to customers.<\/p>\n

\u2018We don\u2019t serve 70 per cent of the market, those people who don\u2019t use advisers. That\u2019s daft.\u2019<\/p>\n

Nish\u2019s enthusiasm for the savings market may not be shared by some of Standard Life\u2019s big rivals such as Prudential, which are increasingly looking East, though Standard Life has successful business operations in China and India, to which Nish is committed.<\/p>\n

But more than ever, Nish wants to be at the heart of a British savings boom.
\n______________________________________________________________<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE INTERVIEW: Jeff Prestridge speaks to David Nish about transforming Standard Life. __________________________________________________________________ By Jeff Prestridge. Updated: 21:54, 12 September 2010. Standard Life Wealth David Nish (CEO) Podcast from Richard Charnock. Richard Charnock (CEO) Rory Montgomerie (Client Portfolio Manager) Social Network Facility. They’re knocking down the offices on the executive floor of Standard Life\u2019s headquarters … Continue reading Re David Nish about transforming Standard Life \/<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nRe David Nish about transforming Standard Life \/ - Timothy Robarts - Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/robarts.com\/blog\/re-david-nish-about-transforming-standard-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Re David Nish about transforming Standard Life \/ - Timothy Robarts - Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"THE INTERVIEW: Jeff Prestridge speaks to David Nish about transforming Standard Life. __________________________________________________________________ By Jeff Prestridge. 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