Financial Inclusion Taskforce Members

The members of the Taskforce have been drawn from across the financial services sector, the voluntary and community sector and academia. The 13 members of the Taskforce are:

Benny Higgins

Benny Higgins is Chief Executive Officer, Retail, at HBOS plc. He has a First Class Honours degree in Mathematics from the University of Glasgow and is a Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries.

Bridget McIntyre - UK Chief Executive Officer, Royal & SunAlliance

Bridget McIntyre became UK Chief Executive Officer of Royal & SunAlliance in November 2005. She is responsible for a business with over 10,000 employees and which last year had insurance premiums of £2.6bn.

R&SA has been providing insurance to people on lower incomes for over 15 years. The company is a leading provider of insurance to social housing schemes, operating around 170 schemes and providing approximately 250,000 customers with affordable insurance payable weekly. In December 2005 R&SA sponsored a joint research report by Demos and Toynbee Hall - "Widening the safety net" - looking at ways of expanding insurance protection to socially excluded groups.

Before joining Royal & SunAlliance Bridget worked for Norwich Union for 13 years in a variety of roles including Finance Director of the general insurance business, Finance Director or UK Long Term Savings, and Sales, Marketing & Underwriting Director of Norwich Union's general insurance business. In this last role Bridget was in charge of the retail strategy for Norwich Union Direct including its "Quote me Happy" campaign.

As a qualified chartered management accountant, her earlier career Bridget worked in various finance roles at Volvo UK, the publisher Harper Collins and Marconi Radar Systems, having started her career as a finance trainee at Willis Faber.

Danielle Walker Palmour

Danielle Walker Palmour is the Director of the Friends Provident Foundation, an independent grant-making charity established from unclaimed shares arising from the de-mutualisation of Friends Provident Life Office in 2001. Friends Provident Foundation focuses most of its resources on addressing financial exclusion but has a wider interest in the use of financial markets to produce social value. She was previously the director of Policy and Practice Development at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and has occupied senior policy and research roles in what is now The Big Lottery Fund, the Commission for Racial Equality and the Law Society of England and Wales. Danielle is a member of the Commission on Unclaimed Assets, a Non-Executive Director of North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust and a board member of the Association of Charitable Foundations.

Elaine Kempson

Elaine Kempson is Professor of Personal Finance and Social Policy Research and Director of the Personal Finance Research Centre at Bristol University. For the past 20 years, she has undertaken research into various personal financial services and household money management. Financial inclusion is an important strand of her research and in addition to studies looking into the nature and causes of financial exclusion generally, she has also undertaken work on banking exclusion, access to insurance, affordable credit for people on low incomes and saving in low income households. Elaine was appointed as the first independent reviewer of the UK Banking Codes in 2002 and was reappointed to review the Codes again in 2004. She is a member of the UK Government Social Security Advisory Committee and the UK DTI advisory group on over-indebtedness. Elaine is also a non-executive Director of the Banking Code Standards Board, and a member of the IFS School of Finance Board of Governors. Previously, she was a member of the Treasury-led Policy Action Team 14 on access to financial services.

Chris Lendrum

Chris Lendrum CBE retired as Vice Chairman of Barclays plc responsible for Corporate Social Responsibility last year after 36 years with the Group. He has wide international experience of the challenges in making banking services universally available.

Mark Lyonette

Mark is Chief Executive of the Association of British Credit Unions Limited (ABCUL). ABCUL is the major trade body for credit unions in Britain representing over 71% of credit unions and 84% of their members. The Association is part of the world wide network of credit unions through its apex body, the World Council of Credit Unions. Mark has been working for ABCUL for the last 6 years. Prior to that Mark worked for the Tenant Participation Advisory Service (England) in a variety of roles finishing as Director of Training and Conferences. Over the last five years ABCUL has had a major focus on helping its members to develop their capacity to meet the financial needs of those who are financially excluded.

Bernie Morgan

Bernie Morgan is the Chief Executive of the cdfa. Since taking up her post in April 2003, Bernie has increased the membership of the association, its income and staff. As cdfa's first Chief Executive, she has developed the association into a well-respected trade body representing the vast majority of the UK's CDFIs. She is a member of HM Treasury's Financial Inclusion Task Force, Charities Aid Foundation's Giving Forum, a Board member of Transact, the National Forum for Financial Inclusion and an Advisor to the Commission on Unclaimed Assets. She was also an inaugural a judge on the Daily Telegraph’s Great Briton awards. In late 2005, Bernie led a successful lobbying campaign which secured £11m transition funding for the UK CDFI sector.

Nick Pearson

Nick has been the National Debt Advice Coordinator at Advice UK since 1997. He also works as a part time consultant to CPP Group on the development of its financial health product. With a career spent in advice organisations including Citizens Advice, where he was Manager of the Money Advice Support Unit he has particular experience of consumer credit, mortgages, debt and personal finance issues and with vulnerable consumers.

Teresa Perchard

Teresa Perchard is Director Policy at Citizens Advice where she leads the development of policy on a wide range of social and consumer policy issues, including debt and financial exclusion and consumer protection. The CAB Service is the largest single provider of free, confidential and independent debt advice in the UK with almost 500 member bureaux operating from 3,200 different locations across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Prior to joining Citizens Advice in February 2000 Teresa has had over 12 years experience of developing and implementing policy on regulation, consumer protection and consumer representation through posts she has held at the Office of the Rail Regulator, the Office of Water Services and the National Consumer Council.

Brian Pomeroy (Chair)

Brian Pomeroy was formerly Senior Partner of Deloitte Consulting and now holds a number of public, voluntary and private sector appointments. He is a member of the National Lottery Commission (having been its Chair in 1999/2000 and 2002/3) and of the Audit Commission. He is a trustee of Money Advice Trust, which works to provide advice for people in debt; and a trustee of Children's Express, the newsroom run by young people. He is also a board member of the Social Market Foundation. Past appointments include serving as Chair of Centrepoint and of Homeless Link, the umbrella body representing the homelessness sector. He was a member of the government's Disability Rights Task Force, and a non-executive director of the Pensions Protections Investments Accreditation Board.

Faith Reynolds

Faith Reynolds established SAFE (Services Against Financial Exclusion) at Toynbee Hall, East London in 2002. SAFE offers practical services to increase financial capability, decrease over indebtedness and improve access to financial services (in particular bank accounts) for hard to reach groups. Faith led the working group with Child Poverty Action Group for the recently published resource, the Personal Finance Handbook. She also instigated the first meeting of the Financial Inclusion Forum to support practitioners. Faith has used her experience at SAFE to inform policy debate on asset building, financial education and its delivery.

Susan Rice

Chief Executive of Lloyds TSB Scotland plc, Susan Rice made history in 2000 when she became the first woman to head a UK clearing bank, which has seen a period of unprecedented growth under her leadership. Susan is a non-executive director of Scottish and Southern Energy, a FTSE 40 company, and chairs the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Susan's experience has led to many requests in the UK for her leadership and guidance in the field of financial and social exclusion. She is a founding director of Charity Bank, chairs the Advisory Board of the Scottish Centre for Social Justice and was HRH Ambassador of Corporate Responsibility for Scotland in 2005-06. She was a member of HM Treasury Policy Action Team 14 on financial exclusion and is a frequent speaker on the topic

Claire Whyley

Claire Whyley, Deputy Director of Policy at the National Consumer Council, has more than ten years experience of policy research relating to poverty, debt, money management, financial services, and social and financial exclusion. At the Policy Studies Institute her research covered housing benefit, benefit fraud, fuel poverty, household budgeting and bill payment, and access to home contents insurance. After setting up the Personal Finance Research Centre with her PSI colleague Elaine Kempson, Claire was involved in a number of key studies of the nature, extent and dynamics of financial exclusion. Moving to the Welsh Consumer Council, as Head of Research, in 2001 Claire undertook the first ever analysis of levels of borrowing and debt among Welsh households. Joining the National Consumer Council in December 2003, she lead the NCC’s successful super-complaint on home credit and manages the Council’s Public Services and Consumer Disadvantage teams.