Legal & General’s group chief executive Nigel Wilson says the biggest challenge facing the UK is self-belief.
Mr Wilson explains: “We are a country where people have under-saved and under-invested.
“Consequently, the industry is under-advised, under-insured, under-invested and under-saved.”
The key to tackling these issues starts with a positive outlook, as this has been the key to his own success, he says.
Armed with a degree in economics from the University of Essex and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his foray first into senior management was at McKinsey in 1982.
The majority in the UK don’t have proper pensions, and as a nation, we have under-built housing.Nigel WilsonHe is also a member of the expert group advising on the government’s social care green paper.
But it has not always been easy to stay cheerful, in fact, Mr Wilson admits to having “plenty of scars from business”.
He says: “You learn from all of those lessons what you can do better.
“It’s about looking at the past in an informative way and not dwelling on it, and I think a lot of people tend to dwell; therefore they have negative feelings about things.”
Restructuring L&G
During his time at L&G, Mr Wilson has led several restructures within the group, with the aim to streamline the business, focusing on areas where he says would “accelerate the growth of the business”, and maximise each division.
In 2013, L&G confirmed that 600 jobs were at risk as a result of a merger of the company’s savings and protection business.
At the time, Mr Wilson explained: “The successful turnaround of the savings business now enables us to reorganise our business in a way which best reflects customer needs and the increasingly digital distribution environment.”
This has been his mantra for several years, but although he is electrifyingly optimistic about Britain, he also has a bugbear.
He says: “The majority in the UK don’t have proper pensions, and as a nation, we have under-built housing.
“If you or I put together a list of the top 10 things that need fixing in the UK, we are probably working to improve all those areas and our willingness and capacity to invest is growing exponentially, rather than staying static.”
But every industry has to step up to the challenge, he says.
“As an economy, we are over dependant on banks and so institutions like us have a role to play.
Political uncertainty
Investing to try and deliver inclusive capitalism to bring everybody’s lifestyle up is not happening, because of the political unrest caused by underinvestment, notes Mr Wilson.
“It’s really a catch-22 situation,” he adds.
He continues: “As a consequence of that, we’ve created all this political fragmentation and this uncertainty which is now having an impact on business.”
Indeed, he says political uncertainty is having a negative impact.
He explains: “I find it very sad that there’s £214bn trade between ourselves and Europe – £220bn go through the English ports, £4bn goes across the Irish border – it’s a tiny little problem and as a business problem we’d sort it out in a very short period of time.
“Yet we risk plunging the whole of the economy into recession if we don’t get ourselves over the line both from a European perspective but also from the UK’s perspective.”
But – and here is where his positivity kicks in – as a consequence of all of that, he says the financial services industry has huge gaps to fill.
And, he is incredibly optimistic that the political clouds lying across the US, the UK, Ireland and Europe will be lifted in the next year.
He adds: “As a consequence of that, you’ll see real opportunities for growth.
“We believe the UK remains a great place to invest and we will continue to invest in all of our businesses in a material and substantial way.”
Opportunities in tech
In an increasingly competitive world, Mr Wilson says insurers have to work even harder to find customers to transact with them.
But, of course, for those who enjoy the challenge, digital and creative disruption poses an exciting opportunity for companies to evolve.
He explains: “We’ve always embraced technology – disruption is here with us and it’s not going to go away.”
His background as an MIT graduate means he has always felt positive about the power of socialising information.
In this respect, he says the industry must embrace change and technology, and it has to be “absolutely relentless in continually changing its model” to best serve clients.
He says: “We are already a tech company, we never talk about it externally, to be frank, because usually, people talk too much about the technology journey and not the customer journey.”
For these reasons, he says there are many lessons the UK industry can learn from China.
He admits: “I’ve been visiting China since 1986 and witnessed its transformation and there’s nothing that says we cannot do it here.”
Victoria Ticha is a features writer at FTAdviser and Financial Adviser
