Financial Services Research 2024

Iain Aikman, Director, Strive Insight
Iain is a mixed-methods researcher with over 20 years of experience in the industry. His work has spanned various sectors, with a particular focus on brand and communications research.
In the financial services sector, Iain has worked on projects covering high street banks, business banking, credit card providers, and insurance providers. His experience covers areas such as brand tracking, communications testing and proposition testing.
Iain's approach centres on distilling research findings into a clear storyline with actionable insights to aid his clients’ decision-making.

Tereza Anderson, Insight Senior Consultant, Aegon
Tereza Anderson is a Senior Insight Consultant at Aegon UK, with over 10 years of experience in market research and nearly 4 years in the financial sector. She holds an MSc in Marketing from the University of Stirling. Tereza began her career at Kantar in Prague, a leading insights and consulting company. After relocating to Scotland, she joined STR, a research, data intelligence, and benchmarking company focused on the travel and hospitality sector.
Nearly four years ago, Tereza transitioned to the financial sector, taking on her current role at Aegon UK. She specialises in providing strategic insights and data-driven recommendations to enhance customer experience and improve customer outcomes. Her key interest lies in understanding the emotions surrounding money and the emotional drivers of customer experience, aiming to foster a human-centric culture. 

Jacqui Banerjee, Director, BVA BDRC
Jacqui is a longstanding and experienced member of the research team at BVA BDRC with broad sector experience across a mix of methodologies and within the financial services industry. She has an ingrained passion for vulnerable audiences and qualitative research.  She has worked agency side for over 25 years.

Luke Cadman, Senior Partner, Flood and Partners
Luke is a Senior Partner at Flood, having helped set up the new agency back in 2018.  He has two decades of global research experience with clients in almost every continent (still waiting on that brief from Antarctica).  For someone that earns his living conducting online research, you might be surprised to hear that Luke doesn’t think much of (most) online surveys.  Let’s be honest, the majority are mind-numbingly boring and respondents feel the same.  So he’s made it his mission to transform surveys into something much more fun and engaging, where people actually pay attention and tell us something interesting.  Thankfully, this crazy idea paid off and he now enjoys the challenge of delivering clearer, more meaningful insights for our clients. 

Matt Coggan, Director, Boxclever
Matt leads the qualitative practice at Boxclever and remains a very hands-on researcher, passionate about discovering new & powerful insights, and dedicated to sharing these insights in a way that changes how we think, feel and act.

James Crouch, Head of Public Affairs, Opinium
James leads research focused on engaging with government and public policy at Opinium, an award-winning strategic insight agency. With over a decade of experience, he operates at the intersection of public opinion and policy, focusing on how the attitudes of voters and other key audiences will shape future policy divides between the new government and the opposition in the coming five years.

Tamara Dewhirst, Head of Public affairs, Virgin Money
Tamara is the Head of External Affairs at Virgin Money. With an extensive background in public affairs within the financial services industry, Tamara brings valuable insights into the changing regulatory environment for the banking sector and financial services as a whole, along with its impact on consumers and businesses.

Joe Dharampal-Hornby, Head of Public Affairs and Communications, UKSIF
Joe leads UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association's public affairs and communications, promoting sustainable investment and growth across the UK. Joe drives UKSIF's efforts to advance sustainable and responsible finance practices within the UK financial services sectors. Joe is also a local councillor in the London Borough of Lambeth and actively campaigns for LGBT+ equality.

 Tom Dreaves, Research Director, Boxclever
Tom has worked in research & insights for approaching 20 years, mostly on the agency side. He’s developed a huge passion for financial research, borne out of the challenge of understanding the often complicated and deep-rooted relationships people have with money. He loves helping his financial clients to answer business questions by leveraging the power of different quant & analytical approaches to uncover the interplay between attitudes, emotions and behaviours.

Adam Drummond, Head of Political Polling, Opinium
Adam is a partner and head of political and social research at Opinium, running our public polling for four general elections and working with a wide range of public and private sector clients.

Lisa Edgar, Chief Executive Officer, the Big Window Consulting and Board Director, Merchants Trust

Michael Fisher, Head of Data, The Wisdom Council
Working in customer analytics for over 20 years, both client side and agency, Michael is always looking for new ways to bring disparate data together. He is an expert in creating data solutions that enable businesses to have access to customer insight for everyday tasks. ?An industry leader in data analysis. and complex statistical methodologies. Michael has a number of landmark projects under his belt, enabling key clients such as ITV, Costa, Zurich and Nissan to utilise data, for example.?

Hadi Hedayati-Rad, Leader - Global Consumer Research & Insights, Western Union

Mike Hudson, Chief Risk Officer, Cambridge & Counties Bank
In addition to his role at Cambridge & Counties Bank, Mike is also Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Risk Committee at Dudley Building Society. Professionally qualified and with a MBA from Lancaster University, he has over 40 years of experience working in Financial Services, much of which has been spent supporting Small and Medium Sized Enterprises. As part of the ESG agenda, he is a strong advocate of considering environmental matters. He also chairs UK Finance’s Industry Work Group on Sustainability and is proud to advise that both FS firms he works with are B-Corp accredited.

Paul Hudson, CEO, FlexMR
With over twenty years of executive experience, Paul is a serial entrepreneur and the CEO of FlexMR - the insights empowerment company that helps global brands empower informed decisions. As an active member of the Market Research Society, ESOMAR and an Insight250 honoree, Paul is fully immersed in the challenges that commercial market researchers face and committed to developing practical, innovative solutions.

Alex Johnston, Director, Jigsaw Research
Alex’s first market research project involved catching 2 trains and getting a taxi to interview a factory manager in Welshpool, Powys, about using liquid propane gas for industrial heating. Somewhat surprisingly, he was hooked and has spent the last 30 years researching varied topics, audiences and sectors.
During that time he’s presented at many conferences and won prizes at a few of them. He’s especially interested in taking methods that have been pioneered in one area and exploring their value for other audiences or sectors, including things like BE, ethnography and social media scraping. Alex also has an overview brief on Whycatcher, Jigsaw’s digital research platform (which won the MRS Innovation Award in 2020).
Over all the financial (and other sector) research that he’s done (with the disparate methodologies and topics and audiences) the key thing that drives Alex is making sense of this particular facet of human complexity, so that clients can create competitive advantage.
Outside of work Alex likes horror movies, scuba diving and supports the undisputed best football team in South London.

Diana Kamil-Salmon, Head of Engagement, Fair4All Finance

Anna Lane, CEO, The Wisdom Council
Anna Lane is the CEO and Founder of The Wisdom Council, an award-winning, purpose-led B Corp specialising in consumer-centric solutions for financial services. With over 30 years of industry experience, Anna is dedicated to enhancing financial security through innovative approaches that blend customer insights, technology, and human-centered design. Her work emphasises real-time customer feedback and the predictive analysis of customer vulnerability via TWC’s fintech platform, CitizeniQ, aligning client strategies with regulatory expectations.
In addition to leading TWC, Anna serves as the volunteer CEO of Women in Banking and Finance and sits on the Bank of England’s CEO Decision Maker Panel.

Dorothy Liviabella, Head of Vulnerable Customer Strategy, Santander UK
Since 2014, Dorothy has been the lead on the Vulnerable Customer Strategy at Santander, following 21 years previous service at the bank in Retail Banking and Wealth Management. In her time as head of the Vulnerable Customer Strategy, Dorothy has represented Santander in the UK Finance Vulnerability Committee, and in a number of Working Groups including Domestic, Economic and Financial Abuse, Mental Capacity and Third Party Access.  Dorothy is also a regular presenter at the Vulnerability Academy and has built a strong reputation as a collaborator, keen to work together across the industry to better support those in vulnerable circumstances.  

Sebastian Mitchinson, Group Insight Manager, HSBC
Seb Mitchinson is marketing and insight professional with over 20 years of experience largely focused on the financial services sector. Currently in HSBC’s Global Communications & Brand function, Seb’s been with HSBC since 2014 working previously in their Global Marketing division, across both B2B and B2C audiences.
Since 2020, Seb has been focussed on all things Brand and has played a central role in informing HSBC master brand purpose, promise and target audience as well as developing and measuring HSBC’s global brand building activity.
Prior to this Seb had an agency background, including working at Ipsos.

Nel Mooij, Head of Product - Home, Tesco Bank
Nel Mooy has had a large variety of roles within the insurance space over the last 20 or so years and currently heads the Home insurance team for Tesco Insurance and Money Services. Nel is passionate about bringing the service promise of insurance to life. As part of that, she has taken on responsibility for leading the support that needs to be in place for customers with a vulnerability.  The vulnerable customer strategy that Tesco IMS now has in place has been driven by insight commissioned to understand both customer needs and best practice within the industry.

Lauren Peel, Senior Partner, Inclusive Outcomes, The Big Window
Lauren leads Inclusive Outcomes, a specialist consultancy for consumer vulnerability. She has over a decade of experience in consumer strategy and delivery, from insights and co-design through to experience and propositions.
Lauren started her career at Aviva, working across the UK and Canadian businesses on propositions development and customer experience. Recently, Lauren was Director of Consumer Insights and Propositions at Fair4All Finance and delivered the first ever segmentation of people in financially vulnerable circumstances.
Lauren works with organisations on all aspects of vulnerability and inclusion. 

Maxine Pritchard, Head of Financial Inclusion and Vulnerability, HSBC
With over 19 years’ experience in the Financial Industry, Maxine has found her passion working to ensure that no one is left behind, irrespective of their circumstances and that everyone has fair access to banking. Leading on HSBC UK’s financial inclusion and vulnerability strategy for the last eight years, Maxine sets the expected standards and works with the business to ensure products and services are accessible to everyone. Partnering with external organisations and charities, Maxine’s team has delivered several initiatives to include, the provision of bank accounts for those without a fixed address and those who have survived Human Trafficking/Modern Slavery, the Independence Service to help those with reduced mental capacity remain financially independent for longer and the introduction of Safe Spaces into the branch network.

Ali Pugh, Co-Lead, Strat7 Jigsaw Research
Back in 1993, Ali excitedly showed up to what she thought was an advertising agency interview. However, when asked why she wanted to work in Market Research, it became clear that NOP wasn’t quite the creative haven she’d imagined. Undeterred, she bluffed her way through, landed the job, and quickly became captivated with the sector. Her discovery was as ironic as it was career-defining, given that her only “research” before the interview was finding the office address. And as for thinking Market Research wasn’t a creative industry, well, that perception went out the window within a few weeks!
Since then, Ali has spent over 30 years diving deep into financial services (though she dabbles in public sector work on occasion, but only briefly), becoming a proud qualitative researcher. She’s had the pleasure of working with a who’s who of major banks, credit card companies, insurers, investment firms, and even the regulators. Through all the complexity and nuance, her fascination with the sector has held steady.
Outside work, Ali can be found cheering on Tottenham Hotspur and indulging in endless Law & Order marathons (don’t ask how many seasons—she won’t admit it!).

Sophie Royds, Senior Research Executive, Strive Insight
Sophie has spent the past 5 years training and working as a mixed-method researcher in boutique research agencies, with exposure to a wide range of industries and disciplines.
Sophie has experience working in financial services for both high street banks/ money transfer providers, and emerging fin-techs. This work spans proposition testing, improving customer relationships, and brand comms testing.
Since joining Strive in 2023, Sophie has supported the dedicated behavioural science workstream, tasked with exploring behavioural science theories and tools to better understand and explain consumer data.

Ben Skelton, CEO, Quadrangle
Hello, I’m CEO of Quadrangle. I started at the brand, innovation and insight consultancy in 2003, following agency and client-side roles in planning, brand consultancy, PR, and market research. Despite my role, my primary love remains working on client business, so I continue to try to spend as much time as I can working with and advising clients and our client teams.
Brand and innovation consultancy Corporate Edge (2000-2003) gave me the opportunity to work closely with creatives and graphic designers; an experience which completely reframed my working philosophy.
From this, Dieter Rams ‘The power of good design’ thinking influenced me to create a parallel exploration into ‘The power of good research’, to showcase its ability to inspire decision makers to think differently and act better. A series of short videos unpacks the ten primary concepts in ‘The power of good research’, which is available on YouTube and Quadrangle’s LinkedIn page.
In brief, ‘The power of good research’ is not about methodology; it’s about the things that should happen in and around a project to deliver greater impact and value. I believe they’re worth watching – even the ‘obvious’ stuff is all-too-often forgotten about or deprioritised, and good research is more vital than that.

Joshua Sorene, Head of Brand & Reputation Insights, HSBC
Josh leads HSBC’s Brand Insight function, which has a bank-wide remit to put the customer at the heart of decision making. During his 12 years at HSBC, Josh has led various insight teams with experience across brand, marketing, communications, proposition development, and customer experience. 
A graduate in sociology, Josh began his research career agency-side, specialising in public sector and social research before moving into financial services. Josh is passionate about using behavioural science (alongside traditional research methodologies) to get beyond rational consumer answer and use insights to drive behaviour change and commercial growth.

Jennifer Tankard, Principal, Commercial Finance, UK Finance
Jennifer leads on policy and advocacy issues in relation to access to finance for SMEs, including Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) issues, supporting underserved markets and sector specific issues.

Lucy Tarrant, Research Manager, Principality Building Society
Lucy leads the Research Team at Principality, the UK’s 6^th largest building society.  Lucy spent most of her career agency-side in Kantar’s Qualitative team, working for a diverse range of clients including Diageo, Reckitt, Nestle, Vodafone, GSK and Arla.  From positioning dairy brands in the Middle East to developing telecoms innovation in India and understanding the approach to ageing from Japan to Brazil, Lucy thrived on understanding the nuances in beliefs and behaviours that enable brands to build meaningful connections in people’s lives.
Now closer to home in a client-side role for a regional brand, Lucy’s mission is to foster a genuine culture of ‘customer’ closeness.  Working for a brand often viewed as traditional and with an ageing member base, Lucy looks for new ways to bring the voice of the current and future customer into the business and ensure that that voice helps shape decisions from the ground up.

Giuseppe Tonolini, Director, Strive Insight
Giuseppe Tonolini spent the first part of his professional career in marketing, covering brand management in companies such as Eastman Kodak and Carlsberg. Moved to market research in 1993, he was research manager for Whirlpool Europe.
In 1996 Giuseppe founded The Marketing Lab, a research agency based in Milan. In 2015, he co-founded Strive Insight, an insight agency based in London. Giuseppe has worked across various sectors including finance and fintech. He has also a 20 years experience researching the migrant target globally.
Giuseppe has the ability to integrate a mix of insight approaches, combining different methodologies and trying to overcome the traditional divisions inside the marketing research industry.

Ted Utoft, CEO, BVA Nudge Consulting 
Ted heads up BVA Nudge Consulting’s UK office and is global Chief Growth Officer. Ted leads a team of behavioural scientists who work on guiding better behaviours with expertise in shopper behaviour, marketing communications and customer experience. Before behavioural science, Ted spent nearly 15 years working as market researcher.  Ted takes an insights-led approach to behaviour change, as he feels only through observing and understanding current behaviour, can we guide better behaviours in line with consumer intentions.

Lucy Watts, Managing Director, Financial & Business, BVA BDRC
Lucy leads the Financial and B2B teams at BVA BDRC and oversees the agency’s qualitative research function. Lucy joined BVA BDRC last year from HSBC where she held various insight roles in the bank’s UK, European and global businesses, championing the customer, inspiring customer-centric change and driving the importance of insight across the organisation. Most recently she was Global Head of Insight and responsible for the strategy and insight delivery for global research programmes across all of HSBC’s lines of business. Lucy started her research career as a graduate at GfK.

Anna Williams, Executive Director, Insight, Verve 
Coming from a background of delivering strategic research programmes in global markets, I’ve spent the last 6 years as a senior qualitative specialist at Verve, using a variety of different qualitative methodologies to answer my clients’ most pressing questions.
I find it fascinating to explore how different people relate to personal finances, and in particular, the emotion behind difficult decisions in challenging economic times. I’ve been fortunate enough to explore this topic from a variety angles for the likes of Principality Building Society, Lloyds Bank, Simplyhealth and John Lewis Money – whether in relation to product design, portfolio development or comms planning.
As the research industry evolves to embrace the latest developments in AI, I’m excited to explore the opportunities it offers to enhance, energise and democratise insight for the benefit of all stakeholders.

Craig Winton, Research Manager, Phoenix Group

Alex Wright, Director of Client Partnerships, Kantar
Alex is the Client Partner for HSBC at Kantar and is responsible for pulling together Kantar's capabilities to help HSBC make better decisions and grow its brand. Alex loves connecting people to achieve great outcomes and is a big believer in the power of insights to drive change.
At Kantar, Alex has been involved in a wide range of Financial Services initiatives especially developing thought leadership around women and investing, sustainable transformation and brand value growth. 
With over 20 years of research experience, Alex is a former MRS Council Member and has a degree in Economics and Management from the University of St. Andrews.

Will Wright, Client Services Director, Libertine
Will is Client Services Director at Libertine, where he has been since graduating, and actually a little before if you count work experience. He has wanted to work in advertising for as long as he can remember, following in the footsteps of his copywriter mother. That longevity is reflected in his beliefs in brands, that they are long term endeavours. In a world that is constantly changing and relentlessly busy he believes in making brands consistently stand out from the competition, to earn the attention they deserve. And it’s even more important to get Financial Services businesses that attention because they really matter and they’re not well enough understood and respected, so that is his mission. Unfortunately for his wife and daughter it means they are regularly badgered with educational “discussions” on the benefits of investing.