Daniel Crouch Email and Phone Number

I’m creating a team in Aviva’s Wealth & Advice arm, focussed on building and nurturing relationships with new and existing clients. Customer Wealth Engagement will engage with clients at various stages through a clients financial lifecycle and help them understand the benefits of financial advice, ranging from full holistic planning, a restricted ‘tied’ offering, a hybrid advice model or a more direct offering for those wanting a self service option. We will help and guide customers to the right offering for them through understanding their needs and managing a model portfolio of clients. I’m also working to create efficiencies in the customer journey, through implementing a leading CRM system, acting as a Product Owner, to reviewing digital triage methodology and implementing generative AI to ensure the right customers are directed to the right journey as efficiently as possible.

I led a national team of 20 Equity Release advisers, ensuring that their development across all aspects of the customer journey, quality outputs and conduct risk issues were met in line with our performance metrics. With such a newly formed business my role was varied, and I collaborated closely with other business functions to support the success of Aviva Financial Advice including Propositions & Technical, Marketing, 2nd Line Risk, Governance & Assurance and Equity Release Product, reporting our performance to the board monthly. In line with forming and guiding a new team, change was constant and adapting to this and ensuring the team were able to deliver while we evolved as an organisation was key to our success in 2022/2023.

I led a mixed team of 10 financial consultants who gave mortgage advice from products across 50 difference finance houses. My team covered new homes, second hand property and commercial lending through Ltd company buy to lets. My team were both branch and home based, allowing me to be flexible with my approach to supervision. My role was also to recruit and retain talent, ensuring those who worked with me operated at their best and achieved their aspirations. I work closely with and exceeded targets across several metrics and was required to move between operational tasks and more strategic longer-term work with larger area teams.

I led a team of 13 regulated mortgage consultants and 2 Deputy Area Managers, across the East of England. In this role I oversaw a remote team of home-based advisors selling residential mortgages, supported by a national booking system rather than having previously relied on local branch-based booking. In addition, I supported 25 branches across East Anglia, with mortgage knowledge and key skills around lead generation for the mortgage teams. I worked alongside Business Development Managers to ensure the team’s knowledge was kept relevant around our related insurance products, enabling me to deliver growth in this area. This role helped me to develop my ability to interact and engage with audiences of varying sizes over digital channels and included interacting with consultants through difficult times and understand how I can support people further.

I was initially seconded to the regulated training team for 9 months, tasked with rolling out a brand-new later-life policy and process to a team of new equity release advisors, managers, and ancillary services. I then assumed an Area Manager role supporting a team of later life advisors, who give advice to our members on a range of Equity Release mortgages. I ran a team covering London and the East, ensuring that they adhered to policies and processes set out and guided the team through performance indicators supporting our corporate plan. I also led a national recruitment campaign for the Later Life proposition, ensuring we had sufficient succession planning in place to achieve our aim as an organisation. As the proposition was new to the society, the role was fast paced with a high degree of change, requiring strong joined up communication and resilience.

As an Area Manager for the prime lending team, I led a team of 12 branch-based mortgage consultants across 14 branches as part of the East Region. This role, due to the nature of the business, required a variation of skills from dealing with and leading change management programs around policy and process, ensuring we support the teams and colleagues in the network, to having real strong interpersonal skills and supporting other parts of the business such as HR in dealing with summary hearings. During my time in this role and previous roles, I became adept at reviewing data and understanding the questions to ask, as well as interpreting and supporting colleagues to be their best at work. I also worked closely with 2nd line risk, sharing new findings amongst the teams to ensure this supported our aim to grow our mortgage business safely.

During my time as a District Manager I was responsible for leading a mix of 10 branches, ranging from 2 of Nationwide’s key locations in Ipswich and Colchester to some of the small more costal branches. I was there to ensure that the branches operated within a balanced scorecard of normal ranges, customer service measures, conduct and regulatory risk and all while leading the enablement and engagement of the 90 employees in the district. It was also my role to communicate with other key stakeholders within the Area to effect coverage and performance of the mortgage and financial services trusted advisers. During my time as a District Manager I also effectively rolled out the closure of 2 locations, successfully redeploying the employees and ensuring all of the customer and employee needs were met, and have also taken charge for rolling out the Voyager program (largest single banking platform) in the Anglia Area, which was the largest technological change for Nationwide in the last Decade.

During my time as the Senior Branch Manager of Cambridge, one of the organisations largest locations in the Branch Network, I had several roles include sales managing the team and direct reports, exceeding an array of key performance indicators, sales coaching individuals and groups, meeting FSA and compliance standards and exceeding customer service standards. I was extremely successful in this role culminating in achieving and exceeding sales targets 18 months out of 18 and winning Nationwide’s coveted Superstars award.