Marie Patricia Jennings MBE, consumer champion and figurehead of financial services regulation, passed away on 27 April. She was 84 years old.
Marie was a pioneer in the personal finance field. In her long life she spanned achievements in three key areas: In personal finance education she had many roles as a regulator and was responsible for the introduction of early competence exams for independent financial advisers; she also campaigned as a consumer champion and chaired key consumer organisations; and in business communications, she pioneered standards of excellence in the public relations industry.
Marie was born on 25 December 1930 in Quetta, near the Afghan border in India, going to school in Kashmir at a convent run by Irish Nuns.
On a nightmare trip leaving India, the train in which her family were travelling was attacked three times by different sects (Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus). At each attack, the crowd killed passengers of opposing sects.
On each occasion her father went out to negotiate, but was told to go back into the train to his wife and the ‘missibaba’ to make a cup of tea – what British people did at times of crisis. By the time the train arrived at Mumbai, there was almost no one but her family alive on it.
Her first job in the UK was with the theatrical agent Philip Brown, where Marie was present at the first auditions of aspirant stars of the period including Peter Sellers and Bob Monkhouse.
In 1951 she joined the US public relations consultancy Roy Bernard. Clients there included the new government of West Germany and the senate of West Berlin, where she worked with then mayor, Willy Brandt. She was responsible for taking lobby correspondents into East Berlin during the most difficult phase of the Cold War.
Her public relations work included innovations such as proposals to add fibre to breakfast cereals, putting toiletries into supermarkets, and developing the use of sports sponsorship to promote brands. She also managed the publicity programme for the establishment of the US trade centres in London and Frankfurt.
Her interest in education led to a series of lectures at the Royal Society of Arts in London, to pioneer the subject of craft design and technology, culminating after 10 years with its introduction into the core curriculum.
Her work in the field of communications for personal finance began in 1960 with a column in Woman’s Journal, one of the first regular columns on personal finance, and acknowledged as a valuable source of advice by many correspondents including Edmund de Rothschild. This led to work with Midland Bank (now HSBC), and the Unit Trust Association. In the field of financial services regulation, she worked with the Insurance Ombudsman as deputy chairman, the Financial Intermediaries, Managers and Brokers Regulatory Association (FIMBRA), the Personal Investment Authority (PIA), and the Financial Services Authority (FSA), where she served on the consumer education panel.
In parallel, she set up the Money Management Council, (not connected to Money Management magazine), which is still the only personal finance education charity and, as part of this work, she pioneered featuring the subject on national television, with Money-Go-Round and Channel 4’s award-winning programme, Moneyspinner. As part of her work in the broadcast media, she contributed a spot on the British Forces Services network for over five years. She was also consultant editor on personal finance topics for Good Housekeeping magazine.
Always an internationalist, she worked on Commonwealth programmes, helping to pioneer and establish the ‘social agenda’ that is now implicit in Commonwealth conferences. She made a speciality of working with the wives of Commonwealth leaders and giving them a more active role in the organisation’s events.
Marie was a published author, having written some 10 books on personal finance and other topics; three books concerned her rich and varied personal life.
In 2000 she was appointed MBE for services to personal finance.
Marie married four times. She was married for 30 years to the late Professor Brian Locke with whom she moved from London to Bisley, Gloucestershire in 1975. In April 2007, she married the mathematician Professor Walter Hayman, FRS. She has one son, two grandchildren and numerous stepchildren and stepgrandchildren.
