Alex MacDonald

Head of Insurance at Tesco Bank

I joined Aviva back in 2005 as a team manager in the contact centre and hated every second of it. I saw a job for a Trainee Blackbelt change manager and applied for it. That was the start of my change career.

I love the ever-changing customer needs and evolving technology. There is never a dull moment and when people say insurance is boring, I remind them that insurance is like betting and we wouldn't call the betting apps boring... the question is how do we transform insurance to be more "in play" and customer interactive.

I genuinely don't hate anything about it. I can grumble about how long things take but that is in my (the team who actually make things happen) control to strive to empower our people to achieve quicker and more accurate delivery.

Where to start. First that sprung to mind was the 2017 CDL Classic to Strata Migration. This was a three-year programme in the making, delivering not just the migration of 1.4m customers but customer self-service capability, 6-weekly releases, new call centre op model and not to mention hosting our first system of record in the cloud. As well as this, we have recently delivered the acquisition of the Ageas business and also our end-to-end claims digital service for customers. It is hard to pick so I will leave it at those three.

Fair Pricing. How do we gain differentiated products and market advantage using our Tesco assets.

Tesco Brand and Tesco Assets. We know things about our target customer base that nobody else knows... how do we maximise this for the customer's benefit?

Not really a gadget person…. if I had the money, I would have a fancy motorhome to travel the UK and France in.

Glasgow Rangers although I watch all football and am a fan of the England national team (and often get stick from the nationalists up North).

I was a teenager in the 90s so my bands are Oasis, Primal Scream, Stone Roses, Shed Seven, Ocean Colour Scene and recently Gerry Cinnamon (as he grew up not far from me and his songs resonate with my upbringing or people I went to school with).

Chocolate and wine.

I have six kids so I don't believe I ever unwind... I try to live the easiest life possible, which tends to involve giving the kids whatever they ask for.