Tesco appoints banking director

Tesco has appointed its first director of financial services to organise its drive into own-label banking and personal finance.

Former Bristol & West building society finance chief Stuart Castledine has been hired to take on the role, which includes overseeing the Clubcard Plus payment card launched in June.

Castledine was unavailable for comment but a Tesco spokesman says: “We are only eight weeks into the launch of Clubcard Plus and it is too early to start to speculate on what comes next.”

Tesco’s plans to move into financial services, which were first revealed in Marketing Week (April 19), now include the possibility of introducing a deposit taking service, execution-only sales of personal equity plans, and pension and life products.

An insider told Marketing Week in April: “Tesco has watched banks and thinks that most are a bunch of clowns. Tesco can do a much better job. It has a much stronger customer base than the banks.”

It is understood that Castledine’s brief will also include selling gas and electricity supplies once full deregulation takes place in 1998.

At Bristol & West, Castledine was head of group operations for finance, where he handled the finance side of the building society’s retail and non-retail divisions.