Meet the team supporting your retirement business

My name is Key Westgarth. I'm Head of Retirement Distribution at Aviva. My role as Head of Retirement Distribution is really varied, which is what I love about it. I look after the distribution team, which covers sales support, telephony BDMs as well as our field team. It's all about what we can do for our brokers so that they can have better customer outcomes.

And that could be education, it could be support. But as Head of Retirement Distribution, I work really closely with their internal colleagues. So pricing, marketing, operations but again really making sure that we achieve the best possible customer outcome. I think for me it's really important that me and my team support adviser contacts through being visible and being practical, giving them really practical solutions.

We have been in a real period of change within our marketplace, and what's really important is for us to almost help them through that change, but also to future proof for what other changes could be. And working for somebody like Aviva, with the years of experience we've got in this market, really allows us to do that. Working in distribution is great fun.

It is really fast paced. It is really demanding, but it is all about interaction with the team, with our brokers, with our internal colleagues. But more importantly, just looking at how we can support our market, how we can help grow our market. I'd love to say there was only one essential skill I need for my role. I think the two that I fall back on are communication and leadership.

I think through any challenging times, leadership is really key so the team know what their goals are and what's driving them. And I think communication and clear direction, both for our broker population as well as the team. They have to know that what we're helping them with will really help their businesses going forward. And for my team, they have to absolutely know that I'm going to give them the tools, the collateral and the capability to do that.

Fun fact about me is I am obsessed with all things space, and the one of the biggest highlights in my career was I was an opening speaker at a conference before Tim Peake, and I can honestly say it has taken a lot to peak that because, yeah, space is my obsession. I think what's really important for me, if I look at the tenure of my team and how approachable they are, I think it's great to be available for our broker advisers, for our internal colleagues and just really see how we can help. It's what distribution is really all about.

Hi, I’m Neil Uttley, Strategic Account Manager here at Aviva. My role as a Strategic Account Manager here at Aviva involves dealing with some of our largest distribution partners and managing our ongoing relationship. Whether that's talking about new products, services, talking through issues, or talking about new opportunities of collaboration. A typical day, no day looks the same. Every day is different.

And that's the bit I must enjoy about doing this role at Aviva. I support our advisers by being there as a technical contact here at the Aviva, supporting our ongoing relationship, making sure they're aware of our products and our services, and being there occasionally when things go wrong for them. I enjoy working in distribution because no day is the same.

Literally every day I turn up to work. There's always something different to do, whether that's people or tasks at hand. The most important skill for this role is two I would argue, patience and perseverance. A fun fact about myself I'm trying to visit all the non-league football grounds in the UK. We're here to support you as advisers deliver great outcomes to your customers.

Hi, I'm John MacDonald, Strategic Account Manager at Aviva Retirement. My role is to support our large network and specialist relationships and help them to navigate the retirement landscape today, that's across both equity release, our retirement lending division and also retirement income, our annuity division. A typical day for me after the nursery run of course, might include some strategic meetings with our partners which will help shape their adviser proposition both for now and in the future, but also running educational webinars or presenting at industry events as well, or even working internally on some of our products and future market developments.

I support my adviser contacts by helping them with the current landscape of the market today, sharing market insights, but also giving them ideas on how to grow their business in addition to technical insights which they may not get on a usual day to day basis either. The thing I enjoy most about working in distribution is actually the team.

As cheesy as it sounds, a lot of the team are very high energy and we have a number of relationships we manage, so having that high energy and surrounding yourself with that is is a great part of our team. So the main essential skill we need for our role in distribution is strong communication. Now that's being able to turn some of the more complex questions into simple answers to help our clients.

A fun fact about myself is, most weekends you can find me at either gymnastics or ballet and tap. Obviously it's not me, the one that's taking part.

I'm James Northard and I'm a Retirement Key Account Manager. A bit about my role on a typical day looks like for me is mainly on the road, so I go and visit accounts in the north of the region. So that's north of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, Northern Wales. Go to meet advisers and their teams to understand their business, how we can support them, what their priorities and what their strategy are, and then basically putting an account plan of actions on how we can support that.

The way which we support our adviser contacts is one, ourselves we can really support with a lot of things from training, support, understanding the markets, understanding regulation change, but also our roles is a bit more like being a bit of a conductor of an orchestra as well. So, if it's not something which I can help specifically with, then we kind of liaise with the internal experts, which we have at Aviva and bring them into help with that conversation or help with whatever we're working towards.

The thing I enjoy most about working in distribution is the people which I work with, and that's both internally and externally. So, I love building relationships with my accounts, really getting to understand them, their needs, what drives them, but also then my colleagues and everybody working together to basically the same goal and same aim, which is to help our accounts but also ultimately help the end customer as well.

So fun fact about me,quite a lot of people know this, so it might not be a surprise, but I used to be a professional golfer. It was my first chosen career. Turnedprofessional when I was kind of early 20s, and my claim to fame is I've played with and beaten a Rider Cup player and a major winner as well.

Our role here is just really support you in understanding your business, your plans, your strategy, where you want to go. And our job is there to support that in a way which we can, if that's from training, educating, understanding the market, the requirements or profitability is what is your priorities, what we want to know and how can we help support that?

Hi, I'm Robert Anderson. I'm a Retirement Key Account Manager here at Aviva, working in our equity release and annuities business. So a little bit about my role. There's a lot of travelling involved. Typical day usually on a Monday is making sure that the calendar is ready for the rest of the week. We've got some meetings booked in, usually to make sure we're going to see some accounts, spreading the Aviva word, and then usually throughout the week, I'm out seeing individuals face to face, seeing key decision makers and some of our key writers within the industry as well.

And part of those conversations often look along the lines of presentations, getting a bit more into sort of the business writing of the industry, and then also upskilling people on what our industry is offering and keeping people up to date with the innovation that's currently that we're seeing coming through the market at the moment. So the best way that I find to support my adviser contacts is always making sure that I'm there from an email perspective, but also there to pick up the phone as and when you need me, even if that's outside of business working hours sometimes.

I'm always wanting to make sure that I'm there for your clients, making sure that we're finding the best outcomes. But really, hopefully I'm a bit of a work around, you know, trying to find the best outcome that we can here at Aviva and a bit of a sounding board sometimes for some of our accounts. It's the one thing that I probably enjoy most about working in distribution would be a controversial one, and that's the travelling part, probably. I really enjoy getting to see all the different parts of the UK. I always think there's a great irony in travelling halfway across the world sometimes, but not travelling two hours from your doorstep, and there's plenty of lovely parts across the UK that I love going to visit.

And then really the second thing would be the people, okay, there's so many great individuals in this industry and I would say the one thing you want to be in this sort of job is a bit of a sponge. So many things that you can learn from those who have been around for, for so much longer than I have.

So really, it's the travelling and the people in this industry. I think one essential skill, there’s probably three. I think you've got to be adaptable in a role like this. You've got to be able to think outside the box. But you need to be a sponge. You need to be able to learn from lots of different people because the environment is constantly moving.

There's always something new and there's always a bit of innovation, and you want to be able to take that in and learn from it. But we know that things change in an environment like this, whether it be from a market position that impacts pricing, and we need to make sure that we're adaptable to that and to be able to move with client needs and our accounts needs.

I'm a fairly fresh individual to Aviva and to the equity release and annuities market. And a previous role to this was actually working in the British Armed Forces. So a bit of a change to the day to day office. But it was a welcome change as well and really enjoying the, the new role that I've taken on.

So we're always here at Aviva to help you and your clients needs, whatever that be, whether it be from a product position, upskilling, learning a little bit more about the market that your clients are looking to enter, but also looking to maybe just have a bit of a chat about what might be best and, you know, filter out some of those grey areas.

And I think that's where a BDM and a good key Account Manager are worth their weight gold is looking to get honest answers from your contact, and to making sure that we're going to put you in your client first.