Winner: RBS Insurance Finance

Congratulations to RBS Insurance Finance, this year's worthy recipient of the Accountancy Age Finance Team of the Year Award in the business category.

The past 18 months have witnessed some significant performance achievements across three key areas of the business, notably people, service and operations. For a business that employs 500 people across 10 locations, employee satisfaction with communication has jumped from 71% in 2005 to 83% last year. Two-way engagement has been boosted by a number of initiatives, including skip-level lunches, FD teleconference sessions for all finance employees and roadshows.

The company's approach to delivering excellent customer service has certainly paid off, based on the premise that the right people with the right skills are in place to continuously improve finance processes and systems. Even the disruption of a major restructuring of the business at the end of 2006, which saw the business move from one focused on brand to one structured around products, wasn't enough for the team to lose focus. Within one month of the new set-up, finance was able to report on a product and brand basis, with all RBS Insurance entities in a single general ledger and using a standardised management reporting tool.

The 2006 RBS Group Finance customer survey found that, not only had Insurance Finance improved its scores across all categories, but in each one the scores had improved more than any other division. At the same time, 58 finance employees or teams were commended by the survey for making a significant contribution to the business.