It's CEO time

Hi everyone and welcome to the first Scottish Widows podcast of 2025 and to celebrate the New Year and delighted to be joined by Chiranta and Barua, or Chira for short, the CEO of Scottish Widows and certainly the most high profile guest we've had on the pod today. I'm super excited to be kicking off the 2025 podcast series with Chira but before we get into the meet of it all just a reminder that this podcast is aimed at advisors and employers and those interested in the world of workplace pensions and it does not include any financial advice. Now I'm going to kick off the podcast in traditional style by asking my co-pilot buddy to tell me a quick bit about today's guest before he introduces himself. So co-pilot tells me that Chiranta or Chira Barua is the CEO of Scottish Widows and the CEO of insurance pensions and investments at Lloyd's Banking Group. He joined Lloyd's Banking Group in May 2023 and before this role, Chira was the global head of strategy at HSBC. He's got extensive experience in the financial services sector, having worked as a partner at McKinsey and as management director at Sanford Seaburnstein. And early in his career, he held various strategy management and operational roles at Standard Chartered and City Group in India. Now Chira is also a member of the Board of the Association of British Insurance, so the ABI, where he contributes to the strategic direction of the association. How does that description stand? Oh Rob, thank you for having me over. It sounds very professionally boring but unfortunately I can't change my record. Yeah, too late to be a rock star Rob, so I'll take it. You know what? There's no hallucination. That is, yeah. So none of that is fake news and that is brilliant. I get always annoyed when you know the different things and I've tried out co-pilot in the past. They always say that I graduated from Harvard, where I graduated from INSEAD. And INSEAD and Harvard have their own rivalries. So I don't like that. So it's brilliant that they didn't pick it up. That's good Rob. That's good. We'll take it. Well, it doesn't tell me. You gave us a hint to this as well, is that I heard you say that you give up your job as CEO for a minimum wage job as a guitarist in a band. So I take it. That's your real passion. That is the real passion. As my wife says, I'm a failed musician who's selling insurance products right now, so that's a bit harsh. But hey. You've got to take it. Okay. Well let's get back to business. And before we jump into Scotchwood, tell me what does your role at the ABI involved? So the ABI role, I sit on the ABI board. I see my role as Rob doing three things, right? The first is just to set the strategy for the ABI, help Hannah and Nikki, run the ABI, set the strategy. And the second thing, which I think is prioritization, the ABI has, it's a broad church and it should be. It has an industry body. But at different times based on external internal circumstances, there's a lot, right, that we work on and how do you prioritize it? And the third, I think I owe it to Scotchwooders and Lloyds to be their voice in the ABI board as well. And to raise the matters which, yeah, which is most important for us, those are the kind of three areas in which I work very actively with the ABI. Yeah, it's a great job. And it's a pretty powerful body. I mean, in the last six, nine months with the new government coming in and the syndications and all the agenda pensions has been absolutely top of the agenda. And I think they've done a stellar job in terms of engaging both in the positives and some of the things which might be pitfalls and engaging with the new government, you know, Kudos. Okay. Brilliant. So let's turn on focus to Scotchwooders then. You've been in roll for Scotchwooders for just over 18 months. What attracted you to join this business and how's it been? So, yeah, it's been something that I have my eyes on, rock for quite some time. Three things, I think, in terms of the reasons why I joined in, the same things that I've told everyone else, including the board. The first one, just the purpose, it's such a purposeful job in financial services. There are very few places where you're thinking through someone which will have a material impact on people's lives, both on the pensions and the insurance side and the purpose really appeal to me. It came to light back in 2015, I think, 2015 or 2016, when I was helping someone who lost her husband and she asked for help in terms of desegregating pensions, which can be a scary proposition for someone who's not in the weeds. And I remember taking a couple of days off and I didn't like what I saw. Too complicated, wrong products, it wasn't a clean journey. So a part of me always wanted to come in and disrupt in the space. So that was one. The second thing is, widows and loits, what a brilliant brand, yeah, we can reach out to 27, 28 million customers, that's a massive asset. So yes, you want disruption, but if you take it from a place with so much strength, so that was great. The third is value, I'm a shareholder of focus on a customer focus person, so if there's no value, I wouldn't want to play. So I think this is an asset which is significantly undervalued by the market, and obviously if you do one and two, you make purpose, work with shareholder value, and based on assets that you already have, that's a mouthwatering proposition. But those are the three things that attracted me, and then he asked me, how's it been, brilliant? That's the one word that I would say. It's been just in terms of getting the new app out, digitizing the journeys, putting the best of technology to bear, gamification, what we've done with the Dundee tech school. Come on later on. Okay. So no, it's been brilliant, very exciting. Okay, great word to use to describe it. I'm talking about bold things to do, what about the brand refresh, so that's one of the things Scotchwood has been known for is this familiar look of the widow in the black cloak, but over 2024, the brand has undergone a major overhaul. How did that come about, and how did you feel about it? The thing is, you've got to, I've always said, if you're a customer-centric organisation, you have to meet the customer right where they are. Today you're doing a podcast, you're meeting the customer where they want to listen on the tube. It's not there 10, 15 years ago, right? So right now, most of our interactions happen with the mobile. Why would it, how would I place a human model, which was the old Scottish videos on a mobile lab, which is the place where I want to interact with customers and help them play games to think about their future? So the brand needed to refresh and needed a new motif. It needed to be much more modern. So that was in essence, but at the same time, it's a brilliant brand. It's got 200 years of history, you didn't want to take it away. So what we found is we retained the strength of the widow in terms of the motif, but what we've done, we've created a digital motif, which allows it to be placed where the customers come to play with us, which is in the digital world. So that's, in essence, the feedback has been brilliant. There have been some negative comments, which always happens when brand refreshes, but we're taking it on the chin, but the feedback has been brilliant. Yeah, listen, we kept the vowels, which was important for us. Go compromise on the vowels. And I was sitting here in my Scotchwooders brand, they told us well, so yeah, I mean, it looks brilliant, but it was bold, right? It was a bold thing to do. So you've come to Scotchwooders with experience in many different parts of the world. So what was your view of the UK pension sector and how well people in the UK are preparing for later life and maybe in prospect for some of the things you've seen elsewhere? So the thing, Rob, when I looked outside in, Walter and Goldman was the best thing that happened to UK pensions. I was not involved at the time for all the people who work, they must have been loads of slog around that in terms of the model, I think, you know, hats off to them. But it still doesn't do society justice. It's a good start. So the three things that disappoint me by the same time, all those three things I see upside as well. So if I can take you through it, the first one is you see in the Scotchwooders research that 38% of people don't have enough in their pension ports, even the feed or what do they call a basic retirement. That is unacceptable. We are a G7 economy. For a G7 economy, for that percentage of population, not to have enough for retirement. Just not acceptable. But the good thing is we've been pushing very hard with all governments, but what the last one and the present one, on seeing that auto enrollment needs to go up significantly. So we've reached out recently and saying, please don't kick it into the long grass. You have just kicked into the long grass though. We have been pushing hard around this. I think the UK will miss a significant trick. The problem, Rob, on that is, by nature or industry, in pensions, we are dealing with a problem, which is not going to surface in the next 15 years. And the world has become so short term buyers. So in my world, you do quarterly earnings, right? No one talks about what your business thesis is for 15, 20 years out. But unfortunately, it's a societal problem. It's time to wake up to that. And that's a big part. And very passionate. Going back to your early question on ABI, that's why the voice of the industry association, they've been very strong on it. That's been, we have to take that on. So that's one place where I'm not happy, but lots needs to be done. The second one is about engagement. The same people who don't have enough in the pensions don't know that they don't have enough in their pensions. They can't afford advice. The chances are that if they could afford an advice, they have enough money in their pensions. That's got to change. I don't know how you do it. You do it for gamification, which is what we're trying. We're going to digital mediums, right? We need to engage and make it early on in people's career so that they say, well, compound interest is probably the most important educational tool that we need to go out to society in simple forms without lecturing them. That's a big mission of mind rope, as you know. And the third one, we need to make people's hard-earned money work harder. I look at the last decade of the big private markets boom, the DC market in the UK completely mistotten it. So that's something that you can't go back and hindsight and make that work. What we're doing with Manchin House Compact when we signed out was it was an asset class. I won all asset classes depending on wherever the market is to be exposed to the hard-working money of my pension policy holders. It's that simple as that. Those are the three things which are quite big. We've got loads to do and I think we're in the middle of the debate right now and I'd want all your listeners and everyone to weigh in on that. Yeah, absolutely. I'm thinking though about other, maybe other areas that you've worked and you've seen great things that we should be pooling in from there into the UK or into the experience that customers get here. Yeah, I like how you're going to customer service, Rob. I mean, on pensions, we go back to the Australian Canadian examples and I'm sure everyone's bored of hearing that, right? We should invent something of our own here. Copy pace always doesn't work really, really well. But going back to customer service, which is a big one, there are no specific ones. I've always said, and what we've tried to do here is Scottish videos, right? So you deliver for your customers on three things, right? If you do that, first is culture. I've seen great examples of hotel chains in Asia. I mean, the customer service that they deliver, it's not the product per se or it's not technology. It's just the culture they make you feel at home. You can't just copy pace that into a business model. It's off the charts. And that's the culture that we should have at Scottish videos and the industry should have in pensions when we're dealing with the most important moments of truth. The second is business model disruption. I mean, you talk about the Amazon and the deliveries of the world. In a way, they've changed the paradigm of customer service, right? But that's a business model disruption. So we should think ourselves as an industry, how do we disrupt the business model? That's the second thing. And the third, I'm a big fan, Rob of design, I'm a big fan of Apple. Me too. So, which is the Apple design? Oh, design. Yeah, we'll take it. We'll take it. We'll wait for design. Well, the thing is, it goes back to my gaming example that we talked about, right? What is that? You're designing some basic information, simplifying it in non-legal language to get an average person and a policyholder start to engage about their future. Yeah, that is design. So you've got to have a mix of all three, which is what we're trying to do. So those are the examples that I pick up, Rob. Yeah, and if we look at gamification, so gamification of pensions and finances, something that you're really big on, we're getting that. And in fact, I did a podcast back in someone with Amy and David on the topic of can you gamify pensions? But you're absolutely of the opinion that the answer to that question is yes, and you stood up our very own gamification team in the original UK Home of Gaming, Dundee. So bring to life to our listeners why you have this passion and drive and where do you get it from? Free gamification. Oh, you go back to my sins, I love gaming, I love gaming, the other thing, a couple of things, right? You know, I go back to media meet the customer, right, where they want to play. They choose the field, yeah, the bring of wood salon, right, there's a plan for business. And if you look at customers, if I want to engage with people right now who are building their pension ports, it's got to be early on, right? They won't come to you for a 101 contact, they don't have a time, they're right around. So they want to meet you, they want to meet you in the app, so you've got to meet them in the app. The second is this is the whole thing about finance and banking and pensions. It tends to spook research says it's spooks to average person. I don't buy that, it's a necessary tool, it's like driving, you've got to make it easy. The way Google, what Google Maps did, what, it made it phenomenally easy from going to 8B. Uber made it really easy to get a taxi, didn't even know where you were, just, you know where you want to get to. So my mandate is tell me where you want to go to, tell me your starting point and I'm not going to lecture you, I'll let you play the games to find out which is the path that you want to take, right, and how do you want to get there? I'm just going to give you the tools. I'm tired of people lecturing on to the rest of the population about what asset classes they invest in, which tax vehicle it is all logic. And I don't want to keep a rent for logic, I'd rather put it in the game, make it very simple and let people play and take those decisions on their own. It's about enabling the country to look after their pensions, doesn't make sense. You know what I mean? It makes sense to me. But I was inspired after the whole thing I did with Amy and David to go and have a proper look at your link, right, as one of the models. So I'm now on a 102 day streak and it's ridiculous, once you start it, you know, I'm just, I'm just on Italian. I'd been to, I went to Sicily last year and I couldn't speak any Italian, I'll probably go to Italy again this year, I love the food. So again, once you start, it's like the nudges that come in are just making you do that little bit every day. You don't want to lose your streak. Okay, our friend is also on it, so we're like on a 90 on day streak together and it's just like, it's that way of kind of bringing something, learning a language, making it easy and bringing that into a common environment where you're talking about together as well. That is absolutely, that is absolutely there. Okay, good. Right, great. So again, vacation, we'll come back to how it's going to revolutionize a lot of the stuff that we're doing. So, we always have got a really well publicised mission statement. I mean, you mentioned it already. It's one of the things that I tried to do here, which is to help Britain prosper. What is Chira's mission statement? I think it's completely a line, Rob. It's helped. So I look at, I've got a very simple view of kind of the span of financial services. The retail bank takes care of your today and the insurance and pensions industry takes care of your tomorrow, simple, yeah. So one thing is, help me pay, help me buy a house. I need some credit for 30 days. That's all your today. And then protect my future, help me save for my future, help me liquidate my assets in retirement. That is all your tomorrow. And this goes back to the earlier point on government pushing back on auto enrollment. And I'm talking about book here. But unless these two match societies don't evolve and prosper, you've got to have your today and your tomorrow, both of them have a massive correlation in national prosperity. So helping Britain prosper is exactly our aim and that's my motto as well. Okay, brilliant. So you've come in with the line statement, we've got driving the business forward, given the business a refresh, we all seem to have this new sense of purpose. You know, a new drive to engage people with the best digital experience possible. How would you do where we are now and where you want to get to? So yeah, two things, I think we've had a brilliant start, right. Let's put it that way. There's the same thing. I mean, just to see you talked about what David's done with design, what Amy's done with gaming, what we've done with the portfolio of the app, the speed at which we launched, the claim journey, the AI applications in GIA, I could go on and on. All of this in last eight, it's been brilliant. It's got everyone quite excited. The trust pilot score, which by the way this morning popped up to 4.4, it just gives the feedback that you get from clients. And I read them one feedbacks as much as I do the 4.4s, right? But I know when I see the one that I've got a backlog, which will clear those one complaints out over the next one, one and a half years. So I almost feel like we're halfway into the journey, but we can't be cocky and arrogant around that. I always say that if you're in the journey, it's a new journey. So in the way I thought about the journey, back when I joined, I think we are halfway in Rob, but we need to discover and disrupt ourselves again in one and a half two years' time. And it's a continuous journey, but no, we feel good, Rob. Yeah, I mean, I've got to say it's great going to demo in the app now, you know, from a space where we were a few years ago, where we didn't have anything and we spoke about something coming, coming, coming, and then once it's got there, it's like delivery, delivery, delivery, sort of. It's been pretty. Yeah. Okay, so the focus of this podcast is workplace savings. So what's your view of UK workplace savings market now? You've spoken a little bit about, I guess, the how the population is doing and how they're not maybe where they need to be, but looking at the workplace savings market, what's your view of that? I think it's quite exciting, right? Given that it's been topical, if you think, if it's a debate, then the industry is life to it. You may not like everything that's coming out. You talked about how the auto enrollment stuff in workplace has been pushed out a bit, but at least it's front and center. It's a typical debate. It's gone. The couple of things we call out, which I'm quite happy with where the debate is going. So one is just the visibility of the fact that a person is not enough into DC pensions, right? The fact that SMEs, right, how do they fund their pensions and it comes out? These are great live debates, which is brilliant. The second is the value for money discussion that's come up, which is kind of important. I don't want it to be lowest common denominator. You think about me and my pensions, right? I want value for money. I don't want it going to the lowest common denominator vendor out there. I mean, that is the discussion that we should be having, right? Is it giving me value for money for all my life savings? That's a brilliant discussion to have and that allows it. And then you put in the third one with, you know, people getting into mansion house compacts in terms of private asset classes, new investment vehicles. I think it's all to play for. It's in focus. It's an exciting time, but what we'll need to do is move from the institutional workplace business to get people more engaged. Right now, the individual consumer in workplace pensions is still detached. pensions are being made for her or him. So I want them to come to the table as well because it's their money. It's almost like the money's been taken out, it's put in a pot, you choose a vendor, stays with it. There's a bit of governance. That is passive. What I want to do and my objective is to get people much more engaged is their savings, their decision, it's their discretion. So I think that's the shift that we'll have to make and we'll have, you know, EBC's, industry bodies, employers, everyone should pull in, but pulling to give the best for the consumer. Till the time the consumer is not engaged, we have an one. Yeah. And planning more disruption to come because of what's come out of mansion house and you went and signed the document on the day or whatever that feel like going along to sign the original mansion house. Not a big one drop for, yeah, so as you said, like if I had gone to meet one of my favourite guitar heroes, that would definitely be a big deal of them, yeah, it is, yeah, a calendar day in my work, yeah, it's that simple as that. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Right. So we've been talking about, so to start at this decade, one of the things that cross-coached would have been talked about is connected 20s. This is the decade where all your finances come together and we've a really strong heritage there since pioneering single customer view. Each week people see their pensions next to their bank account over 8 million times, but the introduction of the ability to connect bank account savings and investments through kind of ingesting money hubs APIs into that, it's been a massive deal in the last year. How excited are you about this step and where's it going to go? Oh, that is brilliant, right? It is the starting point. It's amazing how all vendors in every platform discusses each of our finances in isolation without taking the whole picture in. How can you start the discussion with me on my future when you don't even know what I have and where I have it? That was one. On the other hand, Rob, I've always been so frustrated with the fact that I can't pull out an app which kind of marks the market, all my investments across and tells me exactly that I'm worth 21,232 pounds of today, right? And that is an important starting point, right? We didn't have that and that is brilliant to see. You should see the reaction that I get loads of customer testing that we've done going ahead. They absolutely love it. I'd want to do the same in insurance. We are doing it right now so that in one click it pulls together. Are you protected? Are you invested and bought and just tells you, right, where is the cash? How much is it worth? It includes your assets, your house as well, right? So it will bring in house, it takes out your debt, gives you a net position. Then we can start with the real engagement, which is, is that enough for where you want to be? Then there'll be an engagement of where do you really want to be role? Yeah. What do you want to do when you're 70, right? And then can you afford what you do? And then if you can't then what are the interventions? So the whole thing starts from the initial, it's almost an MOT. And that's what it does in terms of a single view. So it's been a brilliant thing. That's again going back to customer centric disruption. Totally. Yeah. And you've seen over a billion pounds in connections in the space of just a few months. And I think a part of that success is down in design, right? Completely. So as you've seen, we haven't done any marketing around it. I find it fascinating. That is a consumer thesis. And if you ask me about things in other world, you'd have seen this bluster across every tube. We haven't done any of that. This is customers of their own relation who've downloaded the app more than a half a million downloads on the app itself right now, without any marketing. And then off their own relation, going out and consolidating their ports and giving this transparency, that's been at three, four times the market rates, it's what we've seen. Right. That just tells you the power of both the disruption and the design. This goes back to what I've said earlier on. So that's been brilliant. But we should keep thinking about it what next, right, just in terms of it. So there are loads of games I'm not going to spoil, but think about live questions. Everything that you and I have as individuals as questions, this goes back to the purpose of the industry. We should gamify it and we see whether we can solve it using logic AI or anything else. Better than your co-pilot answer. Yeah, definitely better than that. And I guess you spoke there a bit about when you're bringing all those assets together, getting a number from now, getting where you want to get to. But there's a bit in the middle, which is, can people trust organizations to make their money work as hard as it possibly can or as it's sometimes in an organization's interest to keep people in things that make their money rather than being best for the market. But best for them is an individual. I mean, that would probably be a bit of a concern, I think. Rob, we've got to overcome that. Yeah. Isn't that a design problem? Well, it could be. I see there's a classic emotional design problem. One of the most impressive technology use cases that I've seen in the last three years. And I've got a lot of network. One Genie AI came up. Everyone talks a good talk on Genie AI. I can see loads of use cases in productivity. I haven't seen use cases in engagement, but there's one case that I saw, which was referred to me by someone in Canada, which is an anti-smoking campaign. Now, I used to be a change smoker until the time I was 24. Don't tell my mom that, right? But then I left in a jiffy, but I didn't have technology tools. I just had a threat from my wife. But what they have now used is the emotional techniques to Genie AI and an app, which allows someone to engage with an agent. It's an artificial agent. It's been hugely successful, they're testing it in Toronto. What they have done is they've overcome without being preaching and allows someone to engage at their own time. There's not an appointment. You can pull up the app anytime you want, and the app can also intervene with moments of truth anytime it wants. I want to bring exactly that to the world of pensions and investing. But for that, you need to have a very trusted brand, and which is where Scottish videos comes in. If you and I rob, go away and start the same thing and create the rob and share our brand. We can have the most brilliant technology, but it'll take us 100 years to get people's trust to listen to what we're doing. We have the trust. We need to provide the transparency. Finally, the average human being is way more intelligent than you and I think they are. They're just not being enabled, and that's been the core value for me, and then they will find out if you're not offering them the best product one way or the other, it's a transparent market. And then you lose that. And then you lose that brand. You lose that brand. You lose that. The flip side of digitization, when you digitize, the faster you make people come in, the faster they can exit as well. But that's great. The pressure is on us, and that's what you get up in the morning. So we'll have to keep people on the journey, offer the products, offer the suggestions, and if they don't like it, they'll go somewhere else. I think for me, one of the positive surprises has been, as you rightly identified, people end up in the workplace pension scheme, because an employer selected Scotchwooders as the provider. Then are they willing as an individual to embrace that, and then bring in their other assets, and be able to see their, their, you know, their, uh, a Viva pension, a standard life pension, a Huggler's Lands down entire, um, set of assets that they've got there. And I've noticed that the third, not the third biggest by terms of accounts that are connected, is actually monsoaccounts. So I've said, and people who are used to doing that stuff digitally, but recognize this is an experience they quite like over here, and are willing to connect that in, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, the research against shows, and this is why the heritage brands, which are so important, uh, and this is true, especially in the UK, I've gone around the world, and at different places, where customers are much more willing to experiment with newer brands, but in the UK, we quite conservative, when it comes to long term, your tomorrow assets, if you will, with your today assets, we are willing to risk it with a newcomer. If you're paying in Thailand on a credit card or a debit card, you're willing to go with a newcomer, but your kid's university fees that you're saving up for, that you wouldn't want to test it, yeah, with a new brand you wanted, and that is where a brand like videos really, really helps. Right? So you use that leverage, and then you build on it, which is what we are saying in the pot consolidation that you talk to, but these are the levers that you want to give your customers, and it becomes an active product, not a passive product. Yeah. So we've got savings, you've got insurance in there as well, that's been pretty new. That is it, so we try to bring the same, so I, I once realized that I have travel insurance from full providers, which I'm sure I'm paying for, right, not in self, it's a gift, there's no free gift in financial services, Rob, so I'm sure I'm paying for it somehow. One credit card has it, the second credit card has it, I've got to travel insurance and actually my employer already has it. Why can't I get a tool to catch it all and tell me, right, "Cheer, I hear you're going to Spain, this is your coverage, without speaking to it, wouldn't it be a brilliant tool for people to use?" That's something that we want to do next on insurance. Okay, brilliant. So looking back over your time here then, what would you call it as your highlights and how there are any things that you really, really love about this business? So the highlight has to be the launch of the app, Rob, I mean, we launched the app literally in three months. Big borough steel is what I told people, having, you know, there's so much code, which has gone into it, but most of the score was in different places around the bank and the business. The design that came out of it in some of the early concepts, the way we failed, we failed on a lot of things, no one knows about it, but what we have when we fail fast and go back on our feet fast, that's the way you do innovation. That has to be the single most exciting thing over the last kind of 18 months. It's been brilliant. The resonance that I've seen with the brand and with institutions as I go across and the reputation that's great. It's good to have the backing. It's lovely to see people across Scottish videos energised, energised to see the trust by let's go going up, energised to see customer service, energised to increase the pace to break friction in customer journeys. These all become, yeah, it's a rallying cry. As I said, there are more people that people are more intelligent than you think they are. They have much brighter ideas. So all that, you know, you and I need to do is go around and listen and then execute on those ideas. No, it's been exciting, Rob. It's been exciting and it's going to be more exciting. So let's fast forward in the world of workplace, how will things be different for customers at the end of the year? I noticed that today is my second day back, but you've done a piece for us coming back into the business and you've done three things. Make customer friction the enemy. This year. Second, let's ramp up the pace. We already thought it was fast. And third, let's bring the best of us to the game. So what's that going to mean over this year and what's it going to mean for a customer experience by the end of the year? Customers will continue to be delighted, Rob, right? The customers will see things that they haven't seen in the UK before. And then we beat those again and again and again. That is what you should see as a customer. Listen for customer frictions, as I said, for me, that's a big thing. Solve it quickly. It's not rocket science. You're not inventing the next big thing. These are small hacks. Wrap the talent right and give them the resources to go and get those hacks quickly and then get on to the next thing. That's what customers should see. And we should disrupt the industry because I'll go lose a respect for the pensions industry as well. What we want to do is, of course, I want my fair share. I want 20-25% share for all the good work that Rob, you and I are doing, but at the same time, it'd be brilliant to set the standard for the UK as well. I'm tired of being lectured around. This is what those ease are doing. This is what the Canadians are doing. It's time the world came up to the UK and looked at us and said, "Wow, this is what we want to do for our pension industry back home." That's the agenda. Yeah, I mean, if I look at something like the number one question that we get asked when we're out and about seeing people is, "What can I do with my old pension?" Right? And then you look at that pension transfer process a few years ago. It was an eight-page application form. Now it takes eight minutes, but six minutes of that is you're just making sure that you're doing the right thing. The actual. It's like the eight minutes from what we're going to challenge you. To complete the process takes one to two minutes, but for you just to go through the reassurance piece, make sure that you're doing the right thing takes up to eight minutes, but the actual process is only four fields, so you can do that in seconds, sort of completely different from the eight pages you used to have, and that's just going to get better and better, isn't that? Exactly right. That's it. Okay, brilliant. So that's kind of over the course of this year, your three things, get rid of customer friction, ramp up the pace and bring the best of us to the game. What does bring the best of us to the game mean? So we've got so many assets across the organisation. The privilege that you have of having been an entrepreneur in our early parts of my career right now, we've 20 million customers. You've got brands, you've got assets all over the place. We look outside, we speak to third parties, there's so much expertise within the firm. Save that to bear, bring that to bear. There is ton of code, there's tons of brilliant ideas, design, constructive, so all that, you know, tapping in, chances are, and listen, listen to your employees, someone down there has a brilliant idea that probably he or she's too shy to talk about, go and seek those out and execute. That's what I'm taking, Pip. Brilliant, brilliant. And I love that you keep talking about a ton of code, a ton of code. I don't think that's the way that enough of us probably think in this space, to me included, right? Ton of code is about digitised and bringing that stuff and making it easy for people to know. You don't need to write it. Oh no, I wouldn't write it. You don't even need to give it to get involved. But just even having that mindset, right, cool. Okay, and look out a bit further. So to the end of this decade, I said we'd called it a Connectie 20s, that was at the start. We had this kind of vision that all of your stuff would come together in one place and then there would be something that would help you make the most of your money. But where do you think we'll get to within the decade, where nearly, well, we are halfway through now, right? Halfway through. I think empowerment, empowerment is very important engagement. So when I say empowerment, when every citizen of the country feels empowered to make the choices, they have the transparency in terms of what it takes, right? The A to B, the Google Maps of pensions, as we call it. If you've given them that, they will solve the problem. Instead of you and me, the government, the ABI, the regulators trying to solve the problem for them. If you make it, the people's problems, they always get it solved. So for me, it's about empowering them. Does it make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. So the end of the decade, it's got to come back. And then if people want more enrollment, they will put in more enrollment, irrespective of what you and I think, or the government thinks. So I think that's where we need to be. And they will probably flock to the places that make it easier for them to do that. And that is my rent. As I said, I'm a capitalist, Rob, right? What I said is I'll disrupt, I'll massively help customers' lives. I'll keep 25% of the economic rent, simple formula. Jira, it's been a total blast and a pleasure to have you on the Scotchoda's Workplace Savings podcast. What a way to kick off the year. You've excited and enthused me and I hope our listeners feel that energy to 2025 sounds like it's going to be non-stop delivery. Any last thoughts from you? All the best. All the best. Thank you very much. So thanks again, Jira. And thanks also to our sound recordist, Jira Konday, who makes all these podcasts sound great. Thanks to it. There's lots more to come on the podcast channel this year and next up, we'll have one we carried over from last year. My interview with Paul Byrd recently retired after a long career in both a consultant and the sponsoring employer side of a group-printing relationship. Well, I final thanks for me to all of you for listening and if you've enjoyed this episode and I hope you have, then I'd encourage you to investigate our bat catalog. There's a special gamification on AI and pensions and if you subscribe to the channel, you'll never miss an episode. But for now, thanks all, until next time. [BLANK_AUDIO]