Brian McCall
Platform Adoption Consultant
What is your role?
My role is to ensure advisers, paraplanners and admin staff get the best out of the Aviva Platform. I roll out platform demo’s, deep dive into specific platform processes, and I’m on hand for ‘how do I’ queries throughout the day; alongside continuing to build and maintain great relationships with our external friends. It’s my job to enhance the Aviva Platform experience, to demonstrate how easy the platform is to use, to assist advisers and to ensure they know what tools are available.
How long have you worked for Aviva/been in the industry?
Well, I’m probably showing my age a bit here, but I started off in financial services as a spritely 18-year-old in the late 1990s. I was a customer service assistant in the executive pensions department in the formerly known, Abbey National. I’ll always remember, my first day being told that white sports socks were not a good look with a black suit. You live and you learn.
I joined Aviva in 2011, working in operations in the Glasgow office. I absolutely loved it and worked with a lot of brilliant people, some of whom still work with us today. I jumped at the opportunity when the PAC role became available in 2016. The role involves talking a lot, (which as people who know me will tell you, I do quite a bit), travelling to new places and continued learning of new tasks and processes. The great thing about learning those new tasks is I then pass that on by training our external users.
Describe a typical day/week in your role
The great thing about my role is one day can be vastly different from the next. One day, I might be attending a firm in York going through a platform demo, the next day, working from home running training sessions via Teams, and being part of internal working projects to evolve processes on the platform. Whatever type of working day it is, the PAC team are always there to assist.
What is the thing you’re most proud of that has benefited advisers?
Just knowing what I do makes a real difference. I could pick from lots of things that we do, but what sticks out is after rolling out platform training and seeing with my own eyes that advisers are impressed with what they’ve seen. Knowing that our platform delivers what they want, when perhaps other platforms don’t. That’s always satisfying.
