Complex high, visibility change with brand risk

Business and brand

What Happened This UK Building Society, along with several others, faced a brand reputation crisis. Over two decades, multiple commercial failures & mismanagement by a chain of third party providers led to a near catastrophic loss of member’s investment trust funds, a protest campaign, and increasing media and regulatory attention. Its resolution required urgent setup and leadership of a C-level execution team, complex internal and external stakeholders including past and current members, and sector competitors with pressure to meet a 12-month resolution deadline – all under national media attention and regulatory scrutiny. The root cause of the crisis lay in events fifteen years prior to the crisis and involved a policy of referring members to a third party for will and trust services. Four Building Societies co-ordinated to jointly provide support to impacted members, past and present. I was asked to lead a programme to fix it. The Impact The Building Societies held no legal responsibility for the loss. This sat squarely with the leadership of the now-insolvent provider. But the need to support members, and the trust the mutual sector is built on, meant the societies needed to act - quickly and voluntarily. I was asked to organise and lead the crisis management and customer support programme. I executed in 3 stages: 1. Identify everyone affected 2. Design a fair resolution 3. Deliver the resolution under regulatory, political and media scrutiny. Crucially, the programme needed to be successful but without conceding legal liability that wasn't the societies' to concede. Methodology Sponsored by the Chief of Staff, I stood up a cross-functional programme team including the CEO, CFO, Chief Risk Officer, General Counsel, CMO and three specialist senior managers. This demanded close internal and external stakeholder management across regulators, administrators and industry bodies, with clearly defined goals: Review 20 years of member records, much of it lost across two insolvencies and a rescue with no shared data standards Design a support strategy that worked within the society's capital and operating constraints Coordinate a joint response with three other affected building societies whilst complying with the conditions set out in the Competition Act 1998 Liaise directly with the court-appointed administrator, the Financial Ombudsman, and the Building Societies Association Co-operate with an All-Party Parliamentary Commission Build a bespoke payment mechanism to move funds from four societies to affected members, former members and trustees Stand up a dedicated customer handling desk to manage the initiative end to end The Outcome The court-approved programme resolved every case within 12 months and most of them within just three. It landed on time and on original budget, with commercial impact held inside acceptable limits. Effective reputation management ensured media coverage of the response was positive. Brand and sector reputation, which could easily have spiralled into irreparable damage, came through intact. Crucially, the root cause was addressed for good. The society redesigned its approach to customer offerings as part of a broader commercial strategy and operational resilience programme, reducing the risk of anything like this happening again.