Watson to Drive Bright Grey Service From Good to Great
Monday, 15 January 2007
Bright Grey, the specialist protection arm of the Royal London Group, announces that Gordon Watson, Head of Customer Care Operations, is to assume overall responsibility for Bright Grey's customer service and underwriting functions. Gordon has been with Bright Grey since December 2004 and has been instrumental in the design and implementation of Bright Grey's "Good to Great" service development programme.
Gordon comments: "I'm looking forward to continuing the work already well underway at Bright Grey and am pleased to be taking on overall responsibility. I have a great team in place. Over the last two years they've been working closely with advisers to develop Bright Grey's service proposition which many advisers suggest now rivals the very best available in the protection market.
"A major milestone has been the launch in January 2006 of our extranet e-trading platform. Advisers were telling us that they wanted to submit more of their business electronically to improve both speed and ease of doing business with Bright Grey. Our team has certainly delivered, with more than 75% of our new business now being submitted in this way. And, in the past 12 months we've taken 7 days off the average time to offer and 60% of all our clients now receive an offer within 7 working days.
"Bright Grey's core beliefs are built upon the desire to provide the very best support to advisers and their clients, who have chosen us to protect them. This is the very essence of our Good to Great service development programme, and it's working. We're building momentum across a number of key markets, perhaps best reflected in our appointment to a large number of panels over the last six months, including Home of Choice and Sesame Select Plus."
Gordon takes over responsibility for these functions with immediate effect from Operations Director Paddy Lynch who is moving to the newly created role of Project Director within the Royal London Group Intermediary Division. Paddy joined Bright Grey in May 2004 and has designed and developed a customer service operation that is easily scaleable, able to keep pace with the strong business growth the company is achieving and is a huge success. He will now be responsible for the delivery of IT-related projects within the new Intermediary Division.
Paddy comments: "I'm very much looking forward to this new challenge within the new Royal London Group Intermediary Division. It's exciting times for us. And while I'm sad to be leaving my operational responsibilities behind, I know that with Gordon at the helm, operations at Bright Grey could not be in better hands. Our service team rivals the very best, in a market where poor service too often lets advisers down. I have no doubt that under Gordon's leadership Bright Grey service will continue to improve to be the best, bar none."
-ENDS-
For further information please contact:
Bright Grey
Nicki Lundi
Nicki.Lundy@brightgrey.com
Tel: 0131 247 1677
Editors Notes:
• Gordon Watson joined Bright Grey in Dec 2004 having previously held posts within Thus contact centre services where he ran customer service operations for the likes of Virgin and Microsoft. He has over 15 years of experience in the insurance industry.
• Paddy Lynch joined Bright Grey in May 2004 from Intelligent Finance where he was Head of Sales and Service, and part of the project team managing the launch. Prior to that he was with Vision Consulting and has a background in the life insurance and banking sectors.
• Bright Grey launched in March 2003 with its Menu Protection Plan. This flexible plan offers a choice of covers - life, critical illness and income protection for sickness - all under one policy plan. As many as ten different covers can be taken out within the one plan, for different amounts and different terms, to suit individual needs.
• The Royal London Group is a specialist financial service provider and the largest mutual life and pensions company in the UK. Its businesses focus on those sectors of the market that value premium positions and it operates through a number of brands. It announced it was establishing an intermediary division at the end of last year. The new division is made up of Scottish Life, Scottish Life International and Bright Grey and will be headed up by John Deane who joins from Old Mutual in April.