Face to Face with Aegon's Feilim Mackle: Aiming for nothing less than silver service

Since taking the life and pensions helm at Aegon, Feilim Mackle has chosen his management team and is now cooking up his plans to give the firm the best customer service reputation in the life industry.

Just over three months into his new role as director of life and pensions at Aegon, Feilim Mackle has set about tackling one of the main bugbears that advisers have with providers. In a renewed drive to improve customer services at the firm, Mackle has hired former Equitable Life corporate services director Simon Skinner as customer services director for life and pensions.

Skinner, described by Mackle as a ‘very experienced, very senior individual’, previously held the same role at Lloyds TSB and AA Financial Services.

‘Customer services is an area where there is a great deal of similarity across different industries and sectors,’ said Aegon. ‘Simon’s broad experience and knowledge both within and outwith the financial services industry will complement and further strengthen Aegon UK’s overall customer service proposition.’

Skinner worked at Scottish Widows for 10 years, rising to the role of marketing director and was at Equitable Life after its near collapse in 2000, said Aegon.

Taking the helm

Mackle took the helm of the life and pensions business after a restructuring last year in which Aegon combined the individual and corporate businesses. Since then he has been assembling his senior management team and going out to meet advisers and asset managers in both the UK and the US.

‘You get a real sense of what’s going on in their business,’ said Mackle. ‘I like doing that because in a management meeting you can say ‘that’s not what my broker says.’

Following this interview, Mackle was due to meet with a US asset manager to get an insight into what was going on in the US, and had planned trips to Watford and Manchester later in the week.

His first major appointments to the team were Andy Marchant, who was director of Aegon’s commercial pensions business and is now director of marketing for life and pensions, and David Healy who took up the role of life and pensions business development director after being director of Scottish Equitable International.

Ambitious plans for customer service

With his management team now firmly in place, Mackle, who reports directly to UK chief executive Otto Thoresen, has ambitious plans to make Aegon the easiest company to deal with for the even split of enquiries among advisers and direct customers.