Abbey to hire new chief in marketing shake-up
Abbey National is about to appoint a new marketing chief after restructuring its retail banking operations and scrapping the position of marketing director held by Ambrose McGinn.
The UK’s second-largest mortgage lender will soon announce an external candidate as the new director of customer marketing.
Each division of the bank will be headed by a director who will be responsible for marketing and operations and report to the new managing director, Andrew Pople.
A spokesman for the UK’s fourth-largest bank says each director will be responsible for individual marketing budgets, but advertising will be administered by the director of customer marketing.
The new structure, which comes into effect on January 1 1997, is understood to be virtually the same structure Abbey National had five years ago.
Whereas in the past marketing and operations were centralised, now they will be combined into eight product areas including savings, lending, banking, insurance and customer delivery.
McGinn, who was made sole marketing director in charge of Abbey National’s 60m marketing budget in April following the takeover of National & Provincial, will become director of retail savings.
Elaine Robinson will be director of retail insurance. She had previously been marketing director of Abbey National General Insurance. There had been doubts about her future after Abbey National abandoned plans to launch a direct general insurance arm called Future (MW October 18).
