Clerical rebrand should improve standard - advisers

The winding down of the Clerical Medical brand in favour of Scottish Widows should help improve service standards, according to advisers.

They were responding to Lloyds Banking Group's announcement yesterday (as reported on IFAonline) that it will merge the Clerical Medical and Scottish Widows sales teams with the loss of around 300 jobs.

The Clerical brand will no longer be used for new business and eventually will be phased out completely.

Advisers believe a merger was inevitable but should help improve service as Scottish Widows is perceived as the stronger player of the two groups.

Chris Geeson, director at Geeson Financial Services, says he will not be mourning the loss of Clerical Medical which he states "has not been a good company for a long time".

"There was a time when they were a reasonably good company but they haven't been for years. At the moment, I don't understand what Clerical Medical will bring to Scottish Widows."

He says the merger will be positive going forward but it raises a number of concerns.

Pointing to the loss of 300 plus jobs, he says: "None of the work load will be going away. The normal level of interest will be retained and they are losing 300 staff."

"Clerical Medical has never had the best time-keeping levels anyway, so with 300 less people it will be worse," he adds.

Secondly he points to the possibility of a breakdown of computer systems:

"When a fairly big company tries to consume a reasonably small company it is fraught with dangers because your systems break.

"The worry is, will the administration become worse than it currently is on the back of the fact they have to be more diverse because they have taken on someone else's contracts?

"There is always a worry the systems will fail because it becomes overloaded with information."

Meanwhile, Keith Churchouse, director at Churchouse Financial Planning, says the merger will be good from an administrative point of view as Scottish Widow is more efficient in this area than Clerical Medical.

However, he believes there could be branding issues: "Scottish Widows run a relatively efficient operation, but Clerical Medical is a big brand and they need to understand by cutting that name they are taking on a big responsibility and it is something they are going to have to step up to.

"They have got some big shoes to fill and if they just get rid of the brand and don't fill the gap it is not going to work."

charlotte.banks@incisivemedia.com