Awards 2007: Finance Team of the Year - Business

Sponsored by ICAS

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.