The Power of Trust – Our Financial Services Journey

It’s interesting to reflect on Partners in Change’s own journey in the Financial Services sector over the last few years.  Our client portfolio and business volumes have flourished in this time, and we feel we have somewhat ‘caught the wave’!  Whilst we can’t go into any details of the work we are doing, we can venture to suggest as to why we were selected by individual clients in the first place.

Our work in the sector began nearly 8 years’ ago when we started working at Coventry Building Society where an existing contact of ours concluded that an independent expert review of the transformation programme was required.  At the time the client was unhappy with the transformational change service that a ‘Big 4’ partner was providing – they wanted greater experience, more flexibility and less of a ‘boilerplate’ approach.  We were able to provide this by establishing a more adaptable client support model, backed up by a highly skilled team who drew on repeated delivery experience from a variety of brands across the banking sector.

Our successful delivery track record, over many years, at Coventry Building Society led to our client recommending us to both Mansfield Building Society and Secure Trust Bank, both of whom were about to embark on similar initiatives to the ones we had delivered.  Both organisations were keen to secure independent input based on market experience and knowledge of core systems replacement and became clients based on long-term, fractional assurance support.  In turn, Mansfield Building Society referred us onto Chorley Building Society where the client had become dissatisfied with the performance of their incumbent delivery partner and where we stepped in to stabilise the transformation programme.

In parallel to all of this, several of our Coventry Building Society stakeholders moved on to new roles in other organisations, notably Wesleyan and Paragon Banking Group and asked us to come in and help them with similar transformational challenges to the ones they had already seen us deliver.

This blossoming of our mutual client-based wasn’t solely down to referrals and alumni, the delivery track record and credentials we had accumulated also proved to be a differentiating factor.  This track record, together with the expertise we could bring to bear, also allowed us to earn the trust of known contacts in other mutual organisations, and it was through this route that our work at Cumberland Building Society came about, followed later by both Tipton Building Society and Connells (part of the Skipton Group).

We’re pleased – and proud – to say that these trends continue, with currently active conversations with an increasing number of building societies and banks borne out of peer recommendations, client alumni, or re-established relationships with known contacts, all backed up by our delivery track record.

Here at Partners in Change, we don’t take any of this for granted, but it is gratifying that we must be getting something right in a busy and competitive FS sector where it seems securing the right kind of help is proving somewhat elusive for many organisations.