Gemma Livermore: Welcome back to another episode of Seismic Sessions, where we’re going to explore the evolving landscape of financial services with industry leaders. I’m Gemma Livermore, Head of International FS Marketing at Seismic. And joining me today, as always, is Rachael Rowe

Rachael Rowe: Hi Gemma Hi Gemma, lovely to join you. As you know, I’m regional VP here at Seismic and today we have two distinguished guests Michelle Booth, Head of Growth and Innovation at Lloyds Bank and Jen Adams, Chief Commercial Officer at Virgin Money Investments Both are trailblazers in their fields, dedicated to innovation, growth, and transforming how financial services operate.

In this episode, we’ll discuss the evolution of commercial roles in financial services and how breaking down silos between commercial marketing and customer departments leads to success. Now for our regular listeners, you will know that we start each podcast with a question, what does enabling financial services mean to you? So, so let’s begin there, and if I could throw it over to you, first of all, Jen, for, for your take.

Jen Adams: To me, it means a clear outcome focused environment centred around helping real people achieve things they didn’t realise they could with their money. Because it’s easy to forget that financial services and what it does has such a massive impact on the direction of people’s lives.

Rachael Rowe: Excellent. Thank you. And, same question to you, Michelle.

Michelle Booth: Oh, thank you. I think sort of echoing Jen really, it’s about creating profitable customer value. And so as a business, we kind of need to work together to really understand what customers needs and then how we can meet those needs for commercial sustainability. So I think it’s that ongoing balance between customer centricity and the needs of the business.

Rachael Rowe: Thank you, Michelle.

Gemma Livermore: So, as our regular listeners know, we set our podcast in the theme of earthquakes. So, we’re going to today look back at the tremors, where movements began, where movements of change began, at the epicentre of where we are now, and then my favourite part, the aftershocks, where we make our predictions of what things are going to look like in the future.

Rachael Rowe: let’s begin with the tremors and let’s look back at how things used to be. So, despite everyone being office based and seeing each other all the time, pre COVID, pre pandemic, teams are very siloed, and there were distinct divisions between marketing, sales, and other teams. What was this like to work in? And I guess if I start with you, Michelle, what are your thoughts around that?

Michelle Booth: Well, I think that historically marketing departments have had their own silos within them before you even go broader to different divisions. I mean, you’ll have a brand team, a media team, a performance team, a customer team, and they’ll all report into their own head of department and director and ultimately to the CMO.

So that within itself creates a lot of layers and a lot of hierarchy. And then I think then if you add the ambition or attempt to plan annually in a very dynamic market, it meant that you have an annual planning cycle and an annual budget where you’re trying to forecast how you’re going to hit those commercial targets.

So I think that what that means is, with the best will in the world, you can’t predict the unpredictable. And so it meant that you have a structure that is almost based on a world that has predictable outcomes. And yet, as we all know, it’s constantly changing. So what that means on the inside is that you’re constantly trying to revise and, shift what you’re doing whilst also working within these hierarchical structures that by necessity mean that there are lots of layers of communication and also a lot of stakeholders to manage.

Rachael Rowe: And I mean, I think if we think of the consequences of that kind of traditional structure as well, you know, you’ve got hierarchical and functional silos, what did you see as the key pain points that really led to the realisation that this structure wasn’t effective for for client facing roles

Michelle Booth: I think that the larger the organisation, the greater the complexity. I think that’s why startups found it so easy to disrupt because, the irony is, actually having less budget and head count meant that there was actually less silos and more agility and it forces a nature of collaboration. So, historically big banks have been structured around the business, but startups, when they came in, started to centre around customer needs.

And, Jen pointed out, nobody wants a mortgage unless they’re buying a house. So for customers, it’s, it’s about how you service those needs at that moment. But I think that the biggest problem was whilst customers expect a seamless experience, as a big organisation, we were meeting those needs in silos, meaning that different teams are actually trying to do the same thing and they’re effectively competing with themselves.

So I think that the biggest challenge and pain point has been that business operation model, but you’re not starting with a blank sheet of paper as most startups are. So actually the transformation to go from running a BAU operation into a new customer centric, more agile model has been one of the biggest challenges that most big organisations face.

Rachael Rowe: It’s that age old kind of analogy, isn’t it? Of trying to change the wheels on the bus while the bus is still moving.

Michelle Booth: It’s interesting. Yeah. I have, the building the plane while it’s flying analogy.

Rachael Rowe: Yeah, exactly, I think there are many flavours of that, and I love that notion of moving to be customer centric, rather than being inwardly centric, which I think, we, we’ve seen driving significant change across the industry in general. So thank you for that.

Gemma Livermore: And Jen, I’d love to have your views on that as well.

Jen Adams: Yeah, certainly, I mean, I think know, from a, investment industry perspective, there’s some good examples of this when the industry shifted sharply after the retail distribution review in 2012, because it became evident as Michelle’s outlined that fast digital world that a lot of the startups were encompassed in, certainly the world of investing was becoming all of a sudden very technology focused, very online, and that was going to become how many UK consumers were going to be able to continue to invest in that environment without regulated advice.

And so that brought with it a really steep learning curve for financial services teams and businesses who’d been in that industry in a long time or, or you’d been used to how it had worked or had been done in a much less digital, less online centric, scenario.

Gemma Livermore: Yeah, completely agree. And do you think that there was a benefit to those that knew what life was like pre digital? The fact that they had seen it both ways?

Jen Adams: Yeah, I think, I think there was, and I think, people are so inherently adaptable when they want to be that, the, the kind of industry shift almost forced the hand, I think, in, in the investment industry, certainly, because there was so much more benefit commercially to operating in the online space digitally, because the way regulation went, it kind of forced the hand of many industry businesses, but also because there was a distinct hierarchical and, skill focused team structure, it became suddenly very inefficient. But it also helped kind of exploring other options and, at that point, you know, you did see lots of execs, flying off to Silicon Valley to kind of see what all this agile and fast paced delivery was all about.

Gemma Livermore: Yeah. And we’ve spoken there a little bit about how it affected the efficiency in house. How do you think that then affected the client’s satisfaction?

Jen Adams: So in terms of, customer, satisfaction, I think, what it’s worst if we think of the epicentre of this, we had the most comical outcome in hindsight that I saw was, a nearing 10 hour sales process trying to navigate face to face regulated advice in the aftermath of RDR, essentially rendering it useless for customers and commercially redundant for the business.

And those are the kinds of consequences that we’re seeing at that point, which really, just that was during the period where there was a lot of rushing, as I say, to Silicon Valley, trying to bring back theories or ways of working that had been observed to, to try and compete with the companies that were already using those multi skilled teams.

Rachael Rowe: I think drawing both these perspectives together, it sounds like that there was a clear need for change in how go to market teams are structured and operated, and I think this is probably a good segue into the the epicentre so that we can talk a little bit about how things are today.

So Michelle, how have modern approaches to team building changed the dynamics in financial services? Specifically thinking of client facing and marketing teams.

Michelle Booth: I think that as we’ve kind of discussed, the FinTechs created the burning platform, but then there was the need to basically change how we worked. And that is easier said than done, especially when you have big teams that are used to working in a more linear way. and siloed way. So I think that the biggest thing is how do we foster behaviors as much as skills.

And as Jen said, it’s about working in a multi skilled way. And often we’ve worked in a very departmental focused way. So I do my bit and then I hand it over. So that collaboration where you’re working on a shared problem statements, and actually things like races aren’t as necessarily as useful as maybe they have been in the past, because actually what you want is the combined skills and knowledge of a cross section of people at the point of discovery.

And so I think that the challenge has been for people to learn how to collaborate and also the sort of need for things like better facilitation, more workshops rather than meetings, and also the ability to work in the rough. Whereas actually a lot of people were brought up to present very, very polished PowerPoint documents once they were finished, for them to be sort of torn apart in a 10 minute Exco meeting. So I think that that behavior of working far more collaboratively has meant that we’ve needed to learn different soft skills, which is more about collaboration rather than competing with each other. And it’s also meant that, the adoption of skills such as agile, which is as much a learn by doing, which can make people feel really uncomfortable. So I think that the biggest skill as leaders that we’ve had to foster is building teams that are based on psychological safety so that people feel safe to share ideas when they’re half formed and they’re

not as worried of making a mistake and that they feel held as you go into the sort of messy bit of co creation.

Gemma Livermore: And I think COVID really did the industry a huge favor in that respect. When we talk about, you know, the industry having to go at steep curves, it suddenly showed that we were all agile enough to work in this way. And I, I love the part where you say that you need to have that vulnerability and that safety to be vulnerable because the only way that we can try

new things and foster innovation is in that new FinTech way of thinking, which is try things, fail fast if they don’t work, and learn from them and then move on and do better. And what role do you think diversity equity and inclusion play in the effectiveness of this modern integrated teams?

Michelle Booth: So I’ve worked in banking with some of the most diverse teams I’ve worked in my career. But I do still think that there’s a blind spot in the industry and that is bringing people into the world outside of financial services in, and I’m biased here because prior to working in banking, I actually worked in a number of different advertising agencies working across a number of different categories.

But I think that the way that I think is different to a lot of my banking colleagues, because of that broad expertise, the truth in an agency is you learn that banking is a low interest category and dare I say it, most people find banking boring, but also money is really emotive. And it brings up a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt in people.

And we often don’t design for that, for the reason that if you have worked in banking all your life or financial services, by your nature, you’re math literate, you’re comfortable with money. You understand it. And so often that can lead to us over engineering products and services because we’re almost too close to it.

So I think that whilst we’ve had a lot of brilliant diversity into our organisation, I think there’s still that need for breadth in terms of cognitive diversity. So bringing in more creatives, more people that are maybe not as good at managing money. They may be overdrawn. They might not understand mortgages terms.

And I think bringing in more practitioners rather than just managers means that we can design for everyone, not just the financially literate and savvy. And if you actually look at the industry, there’s still a broad segment to play for, which is the people that are turned off by money and the people that we need to help in terms of starting to get pensions early, et cetera.

Gemma Livermore: Yeah. On one of our other episodes of the podcast, we spoke about as AI becomes more and more integrated into our teams and takes over that IQ role, if you like, how the EQ side and what you were saying there is having that cognitive diversity is going to become more and more important as we start to understand how to blend that new A. capability into teams.

Michelle Booth: Yeah. And I also think with all technology, it is about asking the right questions. And, we all talk about getting better one to one communication and more targeted and tailored comms, but if it’s still, do you want a red or a green mortgage? We’re missing an opportunity. And for me, things like

, so I’m targeting people when they’re going through certain life moments, is more important in terms of actually talking to customers about money in a way that makes sense to them, talking to them about their travel and the holiday rather than just exchange rates.

So I think that with all the technology, it is just a tool, but we still need to program it in a way that makes sense to customers rather than just people who work in banks.

Gemma Livermore: Exactly. Exactly that.

Rachael Rowe: Absolutely. And I think also, Jen, you’d mentioned the importance of multi skilled teams as well. So how does this integration improve performance in customer delivery roles in the current landscape?

Jen Adams: I mean, the difference in having multi skilled teams who have the autonomy to collaborate is really hard to quantify, but it does speak for itself, not only in how motivated people are within that environment, but also how positive customer feedback can be about the experience they have and the journeys they go through.

I think that’s the litmus test in my view is how well do customers enjoy or navigate using the product or the service that comes out of that multi skilled team. So for example, within a commercial setting, having someone from kind of legal compliance working really closely with proposition team members on a commercial initiative,

those people also having access to a dynamic customer testing colleague who then feeds back to a designer and integrates with a technical team member to essentially code and deliver the outcome. That can then take a several month delivery down to several weeks and the end result is the customer’s actually had a say, the customer voice has been part of that development and everyone involved internally in that feels that they’ve meaningly contributed to that rather than feeling like they, just did the legal bit or just did the testing bit, you know, the way that those teams talk about it often know, that can be the evidence that you hear then and obviously an engagement scores when you think from an HR How that’s actually evidenced internally.

Gemma Livermore: Do either of you have any examples where you’ve seen significant improvements by breaking down those silos and what that could look like in an ideal world?

Michelle Booth: Well, in a, in another world, Jen and I worked together on Bo and I think Bo was, set up within the constraints of RBS at the time, but it did act as a startup within a wider organisation. And I think that by necessity and also by design, we worked really closely and, one example, I remember when we were trying to look at the T’s and C’s of the app and we wanted to get fairer finance accredited.

We work together with a copywriter and with our legal and compliance team around the same table. And what I observed from that experience is that there was a real problem solving and questioning of how we could do this in a way that was safe for the bank and also made sense for customers. And I think that

everyone was motivated by the purpose and the goal, and I think that created a far better outcome, and as Jen said, was far speedier, but also we were focused on doing the right thing rather than the easy thing, and I think that those established relationships in the same office, kicking it around and going, well, what if, or how about if we did it this way, created that shared accountability rather than the Hospital passing of a document into an anonymous email, which often is what happens in a big organisation.

So I think that bringing people in at the beginning to collaborate on a shared problem statement really can create amazing things that big banks have struggled to do on an ongoing basis. And it comes down ultimately to the trust. And the relationship that the people have together and the ability to feel empowered to

problem solve.

Jen Adams: The way I see that is as Michelle’s alluded to is when we worked on bow, which is essentially startup bank off the side of a big bank, funded by a big bank and, the ways of working and how we went about things were equally weighted, I would say, important as the purpose and the reason we were doing it was very customer centric.

there was a really clear outcome we were trying to achieve for customers in, making people better off, making people feel more in control of their money. And I think that resonated with a lot of the team members because we did have that diversity of thought, Michelle, and you think of the kind of people we had around that table, that notional table,

back then, it really led to lots of different perspectives being brought, but everyone centred around that central theme, which was the purpose of what we were trying to achieve.

Michelle Booth: And I think what really hits home to me is that whilst we acted and behaved like a startup in terms of, it was very much a bootstrapping and we were all in one place representing a full bank stack. We were still within the governance. frameworks of a major big bank. So whereas maybe in the past startups have had the ability to be a bit more fast and loose in terms of compliance, we were still working with the expectations of working with the big bank compliance framework, but the ways of working actually enabled us to do stuff that historically had been hard to do as a big bank.

So I think it’s really testament to how, by setting clear purpose that people understood and felt sort of passionate about, but also being empowered to do those things. It means that we could make some quite big changes while still being within the safety and the constraints of a big organisation.

Gemma Livermore: This is going to be something that really resonates with our audience because it’s definitely something that we hear time and time again, that there is success when you break down those silos, that lots of people want to break down those internal silos to work closer together.

But sometimes it’s easier to say that than it is to do it. So with both of your experiences, is there any tips that you would give our audience who are looking to embark on breaking down those internal silos of how to start that method.

Michelle Booth: Thing is to look at why people don’t do it. we can all say that’s a great thing to do, but also on the reverse, there is a risk and it’s not just a bank risk. It’s actually a risk to people’s social capital. It’s a risk of doing things that feel new and scary. It’s a risk of failure.

And then the other bit is, is that we have to look at incentivisation. if people are incentivised to prove the worth of what they have delivered in their very narrow remit, they are going to be incentivised.to make sure that they’re doing their bit and they can evidence that. The challenge when you work in a more collaborative way of working is that there is more holistic accountability and responsibility.

So it’s a shared incentive. So I think that there’s two things you need to look at what’s stopping people doing it. And I think that’s why I come back to psychological safety so often. You need to feel safe to fail and you need to feel safe to actually be able to test this. And it does feel uncomfortable and it does feel changing against the old school ways of working.

And then I think that the second thing is, is you need to look at your incentives and how you can reward people for the behaviors and outputs that you want.

Rachael Rowe: Jen, did you want to add something?

Jen Adams: Yeah, I was going to just say that I think, to build on what Michelle’s outlined, trying to copy theories on this is, is where, I think in financial services in the early days of trying to adopt this, maybe went a little bit awry, because many of our financial services businesses are not and never will be startups in size and scale.

They’re enormous businesses, as Michelle alluded to, highly regulated and so they should be for many safety and, stability reasons. But trying to make sure that there is a clear why as to why the change would be effective or would be needed and trying to tailor that quite specifically to the industry and the setting that they’re in.

So in the example that Michelle gave earlier where it’s about, terms and conditions, and within a governance environment, a compliance environment, trying to make sure that it’s appropriate for, for that particular moment is going to be very different to whether you’re, building a full application journey for another financial service in a different regulatory setting.

So it’s a bit horses for courses trying to make sure it’s tailored and, and also trying not to just carbon copy from the theories you read in books or see, a company and, in San Fran doing, because it might not be appropriate for the setting.

Michelle Booth: I think that’s a brilliant point because I think, the most important thing about financial services is we do not want to move fast and break things. We want to move faster, but keep customers safe. And I think that that’s why I think a problem statement and a small pizza team of really skilled people who understand the regulatory environment and understand what is important is really, really critical rather than everyone can have a little bit of a play on a Figma board and do all kinds of exciting things.

But it really, success is really in the sort of nuts and bolts of doing hard things well together as a team. And that will change depending on the task.

Rachael Rowe: And I think that’s a really good segue into where we go from here, because I think that what we’re seeing is the current landscape is benefiting greatly from these integrated specialised teams, within sales and marketing, but what do we see in the future in terms of team building? And, and again, particularly within go to market teams.

So if I move to you first, Michelle, how do you foresee the evolution of teams impacting talent acquisition and talent management in client facing roles over the next decade?

Michelle Booth: Well, as I’ve kind of said, I do think that there’s a need and we’ve seen it of bringing a broader range of practitioners in there. But I think that what comes with that is that the need to understand, the best way to onboard, to upskill and to retain those people, which, as we, we kind of, again said, this is a regulated environment is slower.

It’s not Facebook, there are constraints and there are legacy systems that can, frustrate the most talented coder. So I think that we really need to understand how we can engage and support people and also train for those soft skills. technology is ever changing and I think that, you can learn skills, but behaviors are kind of, I believe, pretty much innate.

So what we have to do is we have to, teach and create the culture for those kinds of collaborative behaviors and also that sort of ongoing growth mindset that things are always going to be changing and evolving. So, it’s not like you get to an end of a change program and it’s finished.

So I think that the need to keep a broad view of the industry, beyond just focused on internal politics, which we can all sort of fall into is to keep that curiosity and keep that ongoing learning in terms of how we can work together and keep on sort of evolving as the industry evolves. And I think that is more going into the soft skills and the facilitation and also how leaders can empower teams and let go a little in order for those teams to be retained and engaged because they have a sense of autonomy

Rachael Rowe: And how could that be achieved? What kind of strategies do you think organisations could adopt to nurture and retain the diverse skills and talent that you’re referring to?

Michelle Booth: For me, I think a lot of it is around empowerment. And I think that we are in a transition point where executive teams are working out the best way to empower the people that sit within them. And I think that’s still a work in process across a number of different organisations. But I think that the thing with talent.

Is by their nature, people want to feel accountable and want to be responsible for solving complex problems. So I think it’s also a leadership challenge in terms of how do we empower those people to do what they’re good at. And basically also, give them the time to be able to do the work, not spend time in endless meetings.

And there’s a guy called Bruce Daisley, who is ex-VP of Twitter, who’s done a brilliant piece of work saying since COVID, the number of meetings is more than doubled and actually most people now are often in meetings more than they are doing the work. And I think it’s those kind of things that are real energy zappers, that we need to work towards so that people can spend time doing what they’re good at rather than proving that they’re good at it.

Rachael Rowe: I definitely empathise with the, uh, with, with the meetings overload. I think that’s something that we all are kind of having to manage our way through.

Gemma Livermore: So Jen, with technology continuously evolving, how do you see the role of integrated teams in sales and marketing adapting to incorporate those new tools and processes?

Jen Adams: I see data and effective use of it is a bit of an open goal in financial services, although I’d say we’re yet to really crack it. The advancements we made in the speed and the availability of data and the integration, there is the ability to selve serve. It’s kind of now, how do we create that environment that can really utilise, know, the power of potentially AI, valuable insights that would take a person weeks to gather, into minutes or seconds. And then I think workflow wise, there’s a lack of coordinated use of tools and processes still in financial services, which in itself leads to inefficiencies and unnecessary work. So take collaboration tools, for example, in, teams in financial services are often still firewall and licensing issues and then team level preferences.

And not everyone understands this tool, or has access to that tool, or I think there’s a real role for, potentially AI in optimising tooling choices, depending on the outcome that’s being sought, across big organisations where there’s thousands of people trying to work out what works the best, what is the most efficient tooling to use and, and then, trying to align a bit more cohesively. So you’re using them alongside human skill building, which, should perhaps all be centred around making the most of what’s available to us so that we can add value where human creation and consideration is really the maximum benefit. There’s also really basic things like, don’t get me started on shared drives within financial services, surely AI could solve that conundrum.

It seems such a basic one, but I feel like one where, I’ve not seen an organisation yet where that’s done well.

Gemma Livermore: Yeah, we get a lot of companies saying that that’s a real issue for them and sort of creating that single source of truth if you like, rather than having different shared files and so on. One of the future challenges I’m guessing that you and the listeners are anticipating as we start to blend the different divisions together to work simultaneously. How do you balance that with specialised skills within the go to market teams? So, avoiding potential skill gaps, for example.

Jen Adams: Yeah, I think three challenges spring to mind. So keeping up with technological advances, making sure the skills stay current and valuable, attractive and retaining, as Michelle said, people from outside of financial services who bring skills and perspective that. that aren’t just banking perspectives,

and then also seeking the approaches to how we actually develop products and services, keeping team members interested and considering, better and different ways of doing things.

Michelle Booth: I think that’s a really good point because I think that the risk is always people stop trying to make things better because they don’t believe that it is possible or it’s going to happen. So I think, making the space for brilliant ideas that lots of colleagues have to actually enable them and actually make them come to fruition.

Michelle Booth: So I think it’s also how can we evidence that we can actually take action on some of these things and make them better. Because I think then by that, it then creates the appetite for people to constantly want to evolve and make things happen, cause I think what happens is that sometimes people, in the worst case situation, can become demoralised because they think, well, it’s not going to happen so it’s not worth me suggesting it. So I think that how we actually steward those ideas and see how we can test and learn to continuously optimise will create its own energy and mean that we’re not just putting up with systems that have been there for years, because that’s just the way the organisation is.

Gemma Livermore: Yeah. And I’ve seen people turn to recording meetings a lot more now because where we’re in this hybrid world, it’s creating another silo, if you like, where ideas can’t be brought to the table unless you’re part of that particular meeting. So sharing those recordings afterwards has been a way that I’ve seen companies work around it of sharing information.

I’ve really loved this aftershocks side because I think it’s a great point to look forward and say, what would this be like in a perfect world? If without the constraints of what can be done, how would you like to see this progressing in the future? If there weren’t any of those constraints

Michelle Booth: Think for me, as Jen mentioned, operationally, there’s often a lot of sludge in the system. And so, the two points that Jen raised, both in terms of things like workflow and data, they are just obvious, no brainers. And yet I think every organisation is struggling with them. We’re obviously always focused on how can we increase productivity.

And if it’s not kind of sexy, AI on the moon kind of territory. It’s like, just how can we create better ways of working and how can we get better access to the knowledge, that we’re sitting on. I think just doing those two things would unlock so much potential within big companies.

And I don’t think it’s just banking. I think it’s more broadly than that. But I think then the second thing is, is how can we continuously bring the customer into what we are doing? Okay. so that we can really challenge our thinking and avoid that bias that we might have when by necessity we all become too internally focused.

I think both those two things, which are quite basic, but still hard to do would unlock more innovation, more commercial outcome than any sort of super smart technology solution. That’s the next big thing.

Gemma Livermore: Yeah, I think it’s been very clear from this conversation that building and maintaining integrated teams is crucial for the future success and innovation and financial services, especially for those on the frontline in sales and marketing and those go to market teams. But before we wrap up, do either of you work in an integrated team? And if so, what are your core skills?

Jen Adams: Yeah, my team’s run fully integrated. I’m a really big believer in diversity of thought, bringing a range of different ways of thinking to the table. And I’m really proud to say that I work in a multi skilled team that I introduced and built to relaunch the business that I’m in at the moment.

But also, it helps consider customer perspectives by doing that. And I do think that, considering the customer and the compliance aspects and bringing relevant data to, to direct decisions and using those, all of those different aspects in a collaborative way are just so key.

Michelle Booth: Yeah. And for me, as Head of Propositions, sitting in a propositions team, basically I have a small team, but my role is to basically sit at the intersection of product marketing and digital. And I think that’s really exciting because we’re working with existing teams. And my main task is to drive cross-team collaboration. So it is to facilitate those people and sort of to take them out of their day to day and to work together and to collaborate on new and exciting propositions. So I think that, in order to do that, it’s really about tattling simple stories and sort of caring about people, both customers, actually your colleagues.

And I think that I love doing that. I wouldn’t say it’s easy because everyone does have a day job. And I think that’s the hardest thing we’re all, struggling with our, with our workload in terms of the great work that we’re doing on a day to day. So we have to inspire people to really be excited to collaborate and also to come up with new ideas.

And I think that that’s the opportunity for me and why I love working in banking. Cause I really do believe that if you want to change the world, you work in finance because money makes the world go round. And so the opportunity to work with those different business units, to come up with great ideas, really, my goal is to be the best and fun bit of everyone’s day so that you create attraction and people want to participate in terms of doing new and exciting things. So less like a department in Jen’s way, but more as a collaborator is really my role.

Rachael Rowe: I love that sentiment. If you want to change the world, work in finance. And I want to thank you so much. This has been a fascinating and thought provoking conversation today. we’ve really kind of expanded on the evolution and future of team building in financial services. But I think as, as you’ve both alluded to, probably more broadly than that, and I want to thank you both for sharing your insights and experiences with us today. Thank you very much.

Gemma Livermore: Really enjoyed this. Thanks.

Michelle Booth: Yeah. Thank you. It’s been amazing to chat together. Thank you for your time.

Jen Adams: Thanks very much.

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