Vulnerability Virtual Forum

Sarah McKenzie is Head of Consumer Strategy & Policy at the Financial Conduct Authority. Sarah’s department is responsible for delivering research and insight to ensure the FCA understands consumers, their needs, attitudes and experiences. Sarah also oversees the overarching FCA consumer strategy and cross-cutting consumer policy work including on vulnerability. Sarah has over 15 years’ regulatory experience across various disciplines including supervision, projects, policy, innovation and market-focused work in retail and wholesale competition. Sarah’s work has had a consistent focus on identifying harm and delivering significantly better outcomes for consumers. Sarah started her career at Lloyds TSB, firstly as a graduate trainee before moving into management roles.

With over 25 years' experience in financial services, including Head of roles across Operational and Customer Service and Experience teams spanning across Banking, Sharedealing and Funds sectors. Gail has a significant breadth of knowledge across operational and support functions with roles in Service, Resource and Capacity Planning, Change and Project Management, HR and People and Transformations across both UK and global teams. Previous experience includes roles with HSBC, First Direct, TD Direct Investing and Barclays in addition to working independently as a Business Coach. Gail has a degree in Business and Finance and is ACSI qualified through the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investments. Additionally holding CIPD qualifications in HR Management and currently studying Counselling. Gail has a particular interest in operational transformation and customer experience strategies that support change and growth in a business.

Jonathan's particular specialism concerns the cross over of regulatory exposures and litigation; particularly mitigating exposures which may arise from regulatory risks by obtaining recoveries and commercial solutions from firms' commercial counter parties.Jonathan has also been seconded for six months to a broker and another six months to an international financial services firm.He has also recently completed a Masters in Law, focusing on Financial Regulation, Compliance and Financial Crime.

Matt Gardiner is the Head of Policy, Reporting and Oversight at Legal & General and has responsibility for the Group-wide Conduct Risk Policies, conduct and regulatory reporting to Boards and Group risk committees, as well as advising the business on regulatory change. He is a member of the Group Vulnerable Customer Forum that seeks to share learnings and best practice across the Group. Prior to joining Legal & General, Matt was a Manager in PwC’s Insurance Risk and Regulation practice, advising clients on regulatory change and implementation.

Head of Vulnerability at Capital One. He leads a multi award winning change program which has been recognised at both the Card and Payment Awards and Credit Awards. He has a focus on Universal Design Standards for Vulnerability and promotes consistent practices across industry. He has recently made publicly available the Capital One approach to Vulnerability Design and is a sought after speaker on this topic.

Alice leads the Mental Health Accessible programme working directly with essential service companies, like banks and energy providers, to make their products easier for people with mental health problems to use. Her mission is to get companies thinking about mental health in a similar way to physical disabilities and consider the adjustments they could make to support their customers. Alice is a strategic partnership specialist with a decade of experience in the not-for-profit sector, including roles at Macmillan Cancer Support, Transport for London and Shelter. Outside work, Alice enjoys woodland hikes with her toddler and cooking Spanish food. (she/her) @Alice_RoseCP

Laura joined Nationwide Building Society in May 2019 to lead the vulnerability, access and inclusion agenda. Her role includes setting the strategy for Nationwide on vulnerability, ensuring colleagues across the business understand their responsibilities for meeting the needs of vulnerable customers in their BAU activity, and developing insight-led propositions to meet the needs of specific cohorts of customers in vulnerable circumstances. Previously, she was at Barclays for over 15 years in a variety of roles including: embedding 'treating customers fairly' across the business; leading engagement with consumer campaign groups like Which?, Citizens Advice & Age UK on topics such as financial inclusion, financial difficulty, digitisation & branch closures; and developing propositions for financially vulnerable customers.

Sian is committed to creating a UK in which every organisation - whether government, business or third sector - takes responsibility to ensure that they have a positive impact on people's financial health. Sian’s systems thinking approach to financial inclusion helps leaders and policy makers, just as much as frontline staff, understand how we are each financially affected by the way organisations "do their business". A 15 year career as a diplomat not only showed Sian the poverty and deprivation too many people still face, but also convinced her that lasting change requires both a financially inclusive environment and people who have the skills to navigate that environment effectively.

The Access Solutions team within RNID are responsible for the delivery of services to businesses including workplace assessments, training, hearing loop installation and maintenance, as well as working alongside the very busy Communications Support team who provide BSL interpreters (including virtual), STTR, electronic note takers and other communications services. All the Access Solutions services are designed to support an individual who is deaf or has hearing loss at work. We also help businesses and organisations become more accessible for both employees and customers, and we believe that benefits to business, not only via compliance with The Equality Act and DDA, directly impact the bottom line. Because of this, we continue to be concerned about the barriers facing both workers and customers with hearing loss, despite RNIDs constant campaigning.

Prakash Chandramohan is TISA’s Strategic Policy Director and leads TISA’s Financial Guidance Working Group. He is an experienced wealth management executive with 20 years of financial services experience in the UK, Australia and South Africa. He has spent 8 of those years with Quilter plc where he was the Adviser Integration Director and previous to that the Head of Product for Quilter’s international investment platform. Prakash is passionate about the role that financial guidance can play in supporting people make better quality financial decisions.