PROFILE: Standard Life’s new chief executive

“It’s like with anything you do for the first time. You’re learning as you go”

Paul Matthews has made a name for himself at Standard Life as a no-nonsense, gimmick-free, hard-worker who gets things done.

Historically, he has hidden in the background at Standard Life, having spent the past 22 years at the insurer, working largely in the distribution side. He has also played a key part in preparing the insurer for the forthcoming pension reforms and the retail distribution review.

In June 2011, he succeeded David Nish as UK chief executive. On the one hand, it’s refreshing to see such a senior role being recruited from within, but on the other, is the quiet man ready to face the media spotlight?

But for a ‘quiet man’, he’s certainly approachable. And ambitious. “We don’t work in a traditional office process,” he begins, keen to show he doesn’t live in an ivory tower. “I’m communicating with all the staff on a regular basis; I don’t like emails, I prefer to speak to people.”

Without pointing fingers, he alludes to “certain people that love to be in the media”, but stresses when he appears in public, it will serve a purpose; “when there’s something that needs to be said”.

“There’s lots of debate going on which isn’t always well informed, and so the balance for me is being able to speak up at the right time when some of the debate is going on.”

In particular, Matthews becomes frustrated with commentators continuing to rehash arguments over old ground – in his words, the past is the past, whether it was better or worse, we have to move on.

“We’re going to have the debate over pension reform and redistribution for some time now, and at times it can be a lot of nonsense spoken about products versus platforms. Fundamentally we need to get debate on the future, not the past.

“I’ve been in the industry a long time. There’s very few people in the front end of the marketplace that have been in the industry a long time. And with areas such as technology and transparency, I feel very passionate. These areas are what we need to make sure we have a decent conversation.”

Technology may be a passion, but Standard Life has been caught out more than once by delays to its technological progressions. Matthews admits some projects, such as the launch of the employee benefit platform Life Lens, suffered rollout delays after Standard Life bit off slightly more than it could chew.

“We were ambitious to get done as much as we could, as quickly as we could, and we have had to step back a little bit and work out how we deliver all the demands on time,” Matthews explains.

“It is fair to say we have had a huge demand, and we do know the proposition we have is required and wanted. We’ve slowed down some of the deliveries to some companies because of the requirements they would like us to give.”

But Matthews maintains this will help Standard Life in the long term, because it is now in a stronger position, having distributed its platform to four employers, with another four in the pipeline for this year.

“The question we will have to ask ourselves is: ‘Should we have gone much slower or has it benefited us in the long run that we’ll be able to take on more schemes quicker going forward because we’ve experienced these issues?’ It’s like with anything when you’re doing [it] new for the first time. You’re learning as you go.”

Matthews also admits the insurer may have jumped the gun with its much-reported Dave campaign last year, which targeted Generation X in an attempt to get them to buy Standard Life savings products, but lacked the ability to purchase online.

“The Dave campaign and marketing on the Active Money Personal Pension was something we believed was important for our younger customers,” Matthews said. “To be honest, today, there aren’t younger people [out there] wanting to take out pensions, and so we did slow down on some of the work on that; we wanted to reprioritise.”

Part of that refocusing includes Standard Life’s continued push into the wrap space, both with Life Lens and acting within Mercer’s employee benefits platform.

Standard Life also launched its mastertrust in September, putting it head to head with Legal & General in competing for employers looking for an alternative to the National Employment Savings Trust.

“In the past we’ve looked at ourselves as a provider of products. Now we see ourselves as provider of solutions,” Matthews says.

That means making corporate benefits easy to access on Blackberrys, iPhones and iPads – Standard Life’s mission is to provide the customer with knowledge at their fingertips, which gives them more confidence. “The companies that have not invested in that will lose out because the product is easily replaceable,” warns Matthews.

Self-serve revolution

“When the stock market has gone down 500 points, customers can use the platform functionality to provide information on how their funds are affected. The more we can get people to self-serve, the more happier people are because they can actually get the information when they want it. We’re happy because it 
has reduced our costs to give that. That’s 
the revolution.”

Looking ahead, Matthews believes the future is bright: “There are the biggest opportunities I’ve ever seen in more than 20 years both to grow our business and reduce administrative costs. We have huge plans to capture more of the market via our platforms; we’ve only just started our journey on that.

“Pension reform and the retail distribution review are the biggest changes the industry has had to face, and they’re happening in the same 12 months.

“We’re one market player in the corporate market and one player in the retail market. I see a double-whammy opportunity for us.”