Ron Whatford
Senior Advisor
Ron is a Senior Advisor at Finalta where he works with leading European banks to inform strategic decision making. Ron also sits on the panel of subject matter experts who give advice through Finalta’s Retail Banking Excellence Programme.
Before his retirement from Lloyds TSB at the end of 2008, Ron was in the role of Chief Experience Officer (CXO) of the UK Retail Bank, reporting to the Chief Executive of the Retail Bank and Executive Director of the Lloyds TSB Group. Ron established the function in June 2007 to lead the development and implementation of Customer Advocacy across all delivery channels and lines of business. As part of that role Ron was the “Approved Person” responsible for Treating Customers Fairly within the Lloyds TSB Group.
Ron's previous role was within the Retail Bank as Managing Director - Store Services, with responsibility for leading the development of new sales and servicing processes. This drove rapid improvement in the performance of the Lloyds TSB branch network between early 2005 and the end of 2008.
Prior to working in the Retail Bank, Ron worked for the Lloyds TSB Life and Pension business, Scottish Widows, as Managing Director, Operations. His responsibilities included Client Services and IT. He was also Managing Director of Abbey Life and Lloyds TSB Life. During his time at Scottish Widows he achieved dramatic improvements in customer service, turnaround times of work, unit costs, sigma scores, reduced operational losses, Intermediary satisfaction and staff engagement.
Ron has also worked as Director of Group Operations where he was responsible for a shared service of centralised operations across the Lloyds TSB Group and as Director of Business Improvement for TSB Bank based in Birmingham. Following the merger of Lloyds and TSB he became responsible for the central services function and the purchasing activity merging the two banks' separate areas and delivered a major part of the £400m cost benefits gained from that merger.