Worrying about how increasing regulation has eaten into the working day has been a favourite pastime of UK finance directors over the last five years.

The implementation of IFRS and Sarbanes-Oxley has given FDs good reason to protest, but one finance director who isn’t complaining is Serge Corel, the finance head of Mondial UK.

The French FD of the support services group has worked in the UK since 1997, and like his counterparts has worked through the dramatic changes to tax and regulation that have swept through the finance and accounting community since 2002.

Yet despite the concerns of other FDs, Corel remains confident that the UK is still way ahead of it continental rivals when it comes to doing business.

Corel jokes that London has almost become France’s ‘second city’, such has been the influx of French businessmen and entrepreneurs into the UK capital.

‘The main reason why my compatriots have come to London is the money. There is a huge difference between what you can earn in the City and what you can earn in Paris. But there is another reason - the dynamism in the UK.

‘In France you can get the feeling that everything is difficult to do, whether it is opening a business or even changing your job. Things are compartmentalised and there is immobilism. For many of us who came over to the UK, doing business here was like a breath of fresh air. There have been regulatory changes but the UK definitely still has a competitive edge.’ Corel says.

Dynamism and an ability to manage change are essential for Corel’s role. Mondial is a uniquely structured business offering a dizzying range of services that range from CRM to insurance.

Corel describes Mondial as operating at the ‘intersection of service insurance’. The company, a subsidiary of Mondial SA, which is ultimately owned by global insurance giant Allianz, operates in two main areas.

The core arm of the business provides roadside assistance, customer management, insurance and warranties to car owners on the behalf of blue-chip manufacturers including BMW, Jaguar, Aston Martin and Audi.

A smaller business line has been developed in the travel sector, where Mondial offers insurance through internet travel portals such as lastminute.com and Expedia and airlines such as easyJet. The company is currently preparing to expand into the healthcare sector, where it will occupy a similar niche, and it also has a small CRM software business.

It’s a dizzying list of business lines, but Corel thrives on the variety this structure offers. ‘We are a diverse business and all our clients want something different that suits their brand. Each of our business lines has its own complexities. It’s complex but it is nice,’ Corel says.

He has held his current position for more than a decade now, and watched Mondial UK grow from a 200-man operation to into a business employing 1,000 people and turning over around £100m annually.

New territory

Arriving at the beginning of the company’s UK journey, Corel took charge of setting up a finance structure to cope with the array of services and clients. He has three financial controllers reporting to him, one each for the motor and travel business and a third FC for the company’s Irish business.

‘It’s very important that the financial controllers dealing with the businesses are generalists who understand the business from start to finish.

‘They cannot be limited to IFRS and closing the books. Those things are important, but our finance team is very involved in pulling the levers that deliver results. We play a key role in pricing negotiations and the underwriting business is under the direct supervision of finance,’ Corel says.

He believes that an accountancy qualification has provided him and his team with the perfect tools to take on the responsibilities of pricing deals and underwriting.

He sees the qualification as the ideal way to learn about business and understand what drives success. It also offers versatility and the ability to shift between sectors and service lines and still create value.

‘Working in finance gives you access to the main decision makers and makes you a key part of any strategy decisions. Through the figures you learn how to understand a business quickly,’ Corel says. ‘In one of my previous roles I worked for a company that made clutches, so I was dealing with factories and large manufacturing operations. Now I am in insurance and services. It hasn’t been so difficult to make that change because of my finance training.’

This versatility has been a crucial skill for Corel. Mondial, as the provider of customer services and insurance, has been affected more than most by the growing trend of moving these types of services to emerging markets such as India and China.

Yet despite this development, Corel says the company has not moved any of its operations off shore and has no intention of doing so.

‘I really believe that our services should be delivered in the UK by people living in the UK. If you break down and call in for roadside assistance, the person on the other side of the telephone needs to have an idea of where you are located and what kind of help you need. It is essential for quality service and I think we have seen that with a number of banks moving their call centres back into the UK,’ Corel says.

A separate trend where he does have a more sympathetic view is on the issue of auditor rotation, which has been investigated by the Financial Reporting Council and attracted the attention and energy of the leading accounting firms.

Corel believes that compulsory audit rotation could benefit business and shareholders.

‘After a certain period of time your relationship with your auditor can become a little bit too comfortable. If it was compulsory to change auditors, it would force you to put everything on the table and look at it with fresh pair of eyes.

‘I think that when an auditor has worked with a company for a number of years it does not always give it the same attention that is could because it is comfortable,’ he says.

But he’s not in favour of joint audits even though his was a system he was very familiar with in France. ‘It is a difficult one. Managing your relationship with one auditor is difficult enough, especially if your auditors have two different opinions,’ Corel says.

Whatever happens on the regulatory front, Corel is ready to face whatever comes his way. ‘I started here in 1997 in the same year as Tony Blair. I hope I am going to stay on much longer than him.’

A light touch

‘Sarbanes-Oxley’ and 'light touch' are seldom used in the same sentence, if ever. Yet for Serge Corel, the finance director of Mondial UK, he couldn’t have managed the one without the other.

As Mondial, the motoring and travel support services business, is ultimately owned by insurance and financial services giant Allianz, there was no escape for Corel from the dreaded Section 404.

But rather than work himself into a flat panic about the massive resources and time the Sarbox compliance would cost, Corel focused on implementing Sarbox with a ‘light touch’.

‘We were in the Sarbox catchment area, but I wanted to see how we could comply without using too much resource. We had to find the balance between the two devils of overdoingour compliance or not doing enough,’ Corel says.

He decided to take a ‘DIY’ approach to the regulations. ‘We tried not to use outside consultants and did most of it ourselves. We adopted a light touch approach,’ he explains.

Coping with IFRS was even easier. ‘Luckily we did not encounter the more difficult standards. We do not have complex hedges or derivatives and there are no pension deficit issues so IFRS was not very complex for us,’ he says.