Be Yourself: Phoenix Group CEO Andy Briggs

0:00A CNBC original podcast. We all have to make big decisions in our lives. Decisions that define and influence our professional and personal journeys. If you reflect on them, some are good and some I'm sure you definitely regret. In my nearly three decades as a financial journalist, I've interviewed literally thousands of CEOs, politicians and market voices. And they all had to make decisions to get where they are today. In this podcast, I hear about those choices, as well as the moments of doubt, risk and conviction that impacted our guests' journeys and the people they lead. This is Executive Decisions with me, Steve Sedgwick.

0:43In this episode, I speak to Andy Briggs. I think it's much easier to be yourself than be something you're not, first of all, so you're better at it. But also, I think it works well from a leadership perspective just to be authentic, normal, down to earth. Andy is the CEO of insurance company Phoenix Group. Now, despite huge success, Andy has had career setbacks. In 2019, he was overlooked for the top job at Aviva. I only kind of want the job if that's the direction the board wants to go in, and the board didn't want to go in that direction. Now, with over 30 years of experience in the industry, he places huge importance on balancing his professional and personal life.

1:21Different people have different approaches. What I've learned over time is I'm more effective as a leader if I am balanced. These are Andy Briggs' Executive Decisions.

1:36I've known you for a few years now. I've had the pleasure of talking to you about the evolution of your company, Phoenix, for a long time. But I honestly can say I know next to nothing about you. And so the whole purpose of this show is to learn about the great business leaders and who they are. so who is Andy Briggs? So I was born and brought up in Essex my parents had a real focus on on giving me a good education so my dad left school at 14 to look after his mum so I had no education my mum and dad started with nothing but he went to night school to work his way through and ultimately realised the importance of getting a good education so and I think the values that they instilled in me from a very young age have definitely held me in good stead for my career.

2:25Tell me a little bit about your father, because the values he's instilled clearly come across in the fact that that was your first answer. But then he went to night school, he studied at college, and then actually went on to have a really strong career. Yeah, no, he did. And with a very strong work ethic, but also a strong sense of family as well. So definitely feel very fortunate to have had that upbringing. it's really interesting when i've interviewed people for this show and funnily enough some people have had a really tough background some people have had a very privileged background some people have had a very supportive family some people have had to do it in spite of their family as well what do you think that they gave you specifically apart from say the strong work ethic but has the love of family has the big family connections from your parents and your your your sisters actually been an important part of your career yeah hugely so hugely so i mean you know my parents they worked and strived hard but you know i was the kid at school that still had flared trousers two years after flares had gone out of fashion because my parents couldn't afford another pair of trousers yeah but but ultimately that the values of it all are important and i suppose one of the other things steve for me as a leader is is being kind of authentic being yourself I think is really important as a leader so I you know don't try and be something I'm not I just happily be myself and I think that lands well with people I also the balance is very important for me so I've got four kids myself they range from 16 to 34 but all still need their dad in different ways and I want to be be there as dad for them but I also know you went to one of the the best schools in the region.

4:10We're both from Essex and you went to King Edward VI Grammar School as well. Fantastic school. How important was that in who you are? Yeah, really. I mean, my parents could never have afforded a private school. So Cakes is a state school, but it was one of the old kind of grammar schools where it, you know, selected. So all kids in Essex that wanted to, went, you know, in their primary schools, did the kind of test to try and get in. And I was fortunate enough to get in. and I do think that you know a good education is just so so important young people that don't necessarily always get the the best opportunities in life if they can get a good education it gives them the opportunity to realize their potential I one of the things I do outside of work is a lot of work with the NSBCC the children's charity and and so you can see firsthand through that work just the importance of getting a good opportunity a loving family background a good education and how that kind of feeds through for young people to have an opportunity in life.

5:10So, you know, very, very fortunate to get that. Education is so important, but I do worry we don't know how to train them for life thereafter because it's such an incredible period of change. You're seeing it professionally with AI and how that's changing people's roles and their productivity as well. Do you worry that actually education now is in the dark about how to train kids for the 21st century? I, my sort of view on this is that a good education is not just about, you know, learning your maths and everything. It's actually about creating rounded, rounded human beings. Because although, you know, technology and so on changes, human nature doesn't.

5:49And if you, you know, we try and bring our kids up to be rounded human beings that can interact, that can argue a point, that can be sociable, engage. And, you know, whatever happens in the world of technology, those basic skills are important. So I think education needs to be viewed more broadly than, you know, physics, chemistry and maths. Now, talking of maths, not many people grow up thinking and dreaming of being an actuary. And I'll just remind our viewers, math skills, stats and data analysis to manage risk, forecast financial events and their impact as well. Did you grow up wanting to be an actuary?

6:30Because it seems to me that you almost did. Yeah. So I used to enjoy maths and numbers, always had done as a kid. And so I then did maths with operational research, which basically sort of maths with management, economics type stuff at St. Hamilton University. And it was through that, that university I then started looking at and thinking about careers. But I've always enjoyed leadership. I've always enjoyed team sports and often sort of captain in team sports, enjoyed the people leadership side. So I sort of quite early on thought, you know, I'd like to get into general management and sort of run and lead and manage businesses did appeal to me from an early age.

7:14And the reason I kind of went down the actuarial route is it built off the maths. But at the time, basically, pretty much anyone running an insurance company was an actuary. That's not so much the case now, but it was at the time. So I saw it as a route into management. I only actually did an actuarial role for about one year. So although I qualified as an actuary, I moved into more general management roles very early in my career. So saw it as a means to an end, a route rather than the desire to be an actuary. So that's interesting. And this show, of course, is called Executive Decisions. Was that your first big decision?

7:48Yeah, I guess it probably was. And was it a conscious decision? Yeah, it was. Definitely the idea of wanting to move into leadership and general management. As I always enjoyed team sports and leading teams. And then I then kind of applied to a number of insurance companies and actually joined the one that had the best kind of training development program that were going to give me the graduate rotation type stuff that would have given me that breadth of skills and experience I wanted. So that was very much the decision process. I'll come to that in a few moments time and where you actually ended up as an actuarial trainee.

8:27Again, one of the few things I could find out about you on various bios was about that. But tell me a little bit more about sport. Is sport a really important part of your life? Yeah, very much so. I love sport. I played a lot of volleyball. I wasn't naturally that talented for sport. So I love my rugby. I love football. But I kind of got to a certain standard. I was very competitive, but just wasn't naturally talented enough to go much further. Volleyball, frankly, Steve, back then, there weren't that many people that played it. So I managed to get in the England under-20 squad. I played first division National League volleyball for many seasons.

9:04So, yeah, absolutely loved it. And my height stood me in good stead without that much athletic ability. Right, 6 '4". Yeah, 6 '4", 6 '5". In terms of other sporting influence, and I will do this one because it's very close to my heart as well. You got involved in Essex Cricket Club when you were a young man as well. My family is rooted in Essex Cricket Club as well. Tell me a little bit about that. Because you were working moving hoardings, weren't you? It was my first ever job as a very young teenager. Basic Essex were based at Chelmsford Cricket Club, Chelmsford Cricket Ground. But every season they used to do a week in Ilford or Colchester or Southend.

9:47and I basically used to pitch up on a Friday afternoon after school. You'd load all the chairs and advertising hoardings onto vans. Guys would drive them to wherever and then we'd unload them all, head back the next day to finish off the unloading and then spend the day watching the cricket. One of the greatest leaders of England cricket ever and one of the greatest run scorers was our hero during those days, Graham Gooch. Yeah, indeed. Did you learn much about leadership from watching people like Gucci? I was reading an article at the paper at the weekend actually on this, was Mike Brearley. Of course.

10:24Yeah, where he wasn't the most naturally talented cricketer, but his leadership was outstanding. Because it was an article on Ian Botham, who's 70, who was one of my cricketing heroes as a kid, and how Brearley just got the best out of that maverick talent, if you like. Yeah. um that's really interesting do you have mega stars who are very difficult to manage at phoenix who you can manage because you have leadership skills um so we have some absolute superstars but but we're not a high ego type company and that goes sort of right to the core of our values so we we wouldn't we wouldn't really employ people who who who were that sort of you know that that kind of mega star that's really interesting yeah we're we don't give me i don't want to get put this across wrongly we've got absolute superstars yeah but they would be not relatively unchecked yeah yeah relatively humble and everyone you know our culture and ethos is we're all working for the for the team overall for the company overall for our customers not not not individually okay i've got i've got a superstar you're willing to pay him the right amount of money but you know that his ego or her ego is enormous would you hire them no because you it's all about the team yeah and because the the the whole is more than some of the parts yeah and that's what teams are all about and that's what i learned learned from sport is you know you you get the very best um uh from a from a team where it works as a team as a whole we don't always get that right steve in everything we do but that's absolutely our ethos and so you know we're all about being a great place for colleagues to work they can be themselves they're focused on our customers and our core social purpose the difference we difference we can make in society because our belief is if we get those things right that's how we will deliver most for our shareholders and that becomes a virtuous circle if you andy briggs has to make a decision that is purely about the maximum benefit for shareholders or the maximum benefit for stakeholders do you go with the latter or do you actually not see those two as exclusive?

12:35I don't see them as exclusive, yeah. And I think the long-term success in business comes from making those trade-off calls, but most of them are win-win calls anyway, if you take a medium-term view. One of the challenges being a public company is that sometimes you can see really clearly that you're going to drive value in the longer term, but it'll take a while to come through. And we've seen that as Phoenix. I mean, until this year, our share price was languishing on an 11 % dividend yield, even though our cash generation is super secure and reliable, because it was taking a while to convince markets that we were going to make this strategic pivot from having been a closed book consolidator to being an organically growing business.

13:19Obviously, we're now starting to get some cut through on that. Our share price is up nearly 40 % year to date and still much further to go. But yeah, it's good progress. And that, as a CEO, is really challenging. If the share price is poor, that is challenging. It's a number that says how good a job you're doing now.

13:42One thing that seems very obvious to me is you don't like changing company very often. I think it was 19 years at Prudential. You talked about the training scheme that was available there. And then Friends Life Aviva, you were there, I think, another nine years or so. No, a bit longer than that, actually, wasn't it? Yeah, eight years there. I had five years at Scottish Widows, Lloyd's Banking Group in the middle. But basically, because I sold Friends Life to Aviva, basically four companies through my career. Is that a conscious decision to stay with a company for a long, long time? You feel very settled.

14:12You're not trying to move to move on in your career. If I'm honest, career-wise, I probably would have achieved more success more quickly if I'd moved on earlier from the Prue stage of the career. but I'm absolutely delighted. This will be my last executive job here at Phoenix and it's perfect for me. This will be my last executive job. We're young, Andy. We're in our 50s. I've got plenty of years to go doing what I'm doing though. While there's still one in seven not saving enough for a decent retirement, I'm far from done. It's the perfect platform to do what I want to do so I'll stick here, that's fine.

14:50But if I may, dare I say it, you're sub-60. Only just. I know. I was going to leave it opaque, Andy. But you're sub-60, and you've already made that decision that when Phoenix Life has had enough of you, or you've had enough of Phoenix Life, who knows? Same with CNBC. We never know when it's going to end. That's it for you. Yeah, I think so. So I am 59. So my birthday back in March, my wife very kindly got me the application for my free bus pass so that I had a year to fill it in. That was nice of her, wasn't it? Yeah, that was very nice of her. but yeah I mean I think you know who knows what's around the corner who know what knows what's in the future but I'm certainly not sat plotting that there I want to do something else in my career this is what I want to do and I want to do it for you know many years to come from now but this is this is this this is what I want to do so why why would I go somewhere else with you know Phoenix Standard Life we're the best place company to make the biggest difference to more customers it's the place to be, yeah.

15:49Can I just ask you about when you left Aviva as well? Did you leave Aviva because you didn't get the top job after Mark Wilson? It was all very amicable. I had a clear view of the future strategic direction that I thought that the Aviva business should go in. And I was very clear with the board, that's what I would want to do. and I only kind of want the job if that's the direction the board wanted to go in and the board didn't want to go in that direction. So very, very amicable, all fine. I'd have happily taken on the job had I had a mandate to do what I felt strategically should be done. But yeah, we parted friends, all good.

16:35And I understand that. But given everything you've said to me about your sport and you love the idea of leadership from a very young man, you like the idea of leadership. whereas some people on this show have actually said, I wasn't an actual leader. I didn't actually like leading. But you always wanted to be the leader of a major financial company then. Yeah, I think I've always loved leadership in sport and in leading teams. And I sort of found my way into the insurance sector because it played a real key role in society, which is important to me, but built off the back of the maths. So, did I sit at university and think I want to run an insurance company?

17:14That wasn't particularly the motivation. It was more wanted to be in general management, wanted to be in a purpose-led organization that made a difference to society. So, I did look at accounting firms, and I don't want to be rude to accountants. Lots of nice accounts. I'm a sister as an accountant. But the idea of kind of auditing businesses just didn't really feel to me, didn't have that purpose-led element of making a difference. Look, they're great careers. They're amazing careers. They might even survive AI, who knows? But they are, how can I put it? They're not going to be the most dynamic careers in some ways, in terms of if you want to be a leader and you want to make great changes of the world and you have a strong ethos of what you can do as an individual, not just in the business world, but in society.

17:58Yeah, I think for me, there's two dimensions to it that I think about. I think that some roles you are real technical expert, potentially the kind of superstar you're referring to before, doesn't often lead lots of people, they're an individual superstar. So do you want to be a leader or a kind of individual superstar specialist, technical specialist? The other is, do you want to work in an organization that really does play a fundamental role in society and makes a difference to millions of customers' lives or not? And I guess I chose the sort of leadership route and the purpose-led route. that that was those are the things that were important to me you like managing people love it yeah absolutely love it yeah really enjoy it and um i i enjoy the kind of coaching the development but also you know how and again i don't always get this right at all but uh how you can make the whole of a team more than some of the parts that that's where that's what gets really really exciting where you you know when you get um you know you get people that are very very different in the way they think, the way they operate, their experiences.

19:03And if you can mold them together as a team, one plus one equals three, quite often you get people very different and they just butt up against each other and it doesn't work. But as a leader, your role is - You should try the TV business. Your role as a leader is to make one plus one equals three because you bring together very different personalities, skills, capabilities, experiences, and the whole becomes more than the sum of the parts. I want to talk about the toughest decision you've ever made or the toughest decisions you've ever made. And I wonder if you can give us a little bit of some examples.

19:35As a consolidator, it must be very, very tough dispatching brands, consolidating not only the brands and the business itself, but also the personnel. Is that where the toughest bit of the business comes in? I've never really felt any challenge in brand decisions because they're just objective decisions. It's the people side. When you have to go, you know, ultimately, if we're going to deliver economic growth in the UK, okay, we need to continue to improve productivity. That's essential. Productivity improvement comes from doing things more effectively, more efficiently. Very often that is bringing two businesses together and you can run the combined business more effectively, more efficiently than the separate businesses.

20:15With that comes impact on people. And that's definitely the piece I find the toughest. To go to a group of people and say, you're at risk and these two teams are combining and there's going to be 20 % less of you as a result. That's a whole load of people that are going to end up losing their jobs. That's definitely by far the toughest bit for me. I struggle with it. Have you had to let go any friends along the way? We interviewed one CEO who grew his business from nothing. And he had a great guy. But that person wasn't right for the company on the next phase. Have you personally had to sever links with people you really care about?

20:54Yes, I have. And a number of my good friends are people I've worked with over the years, inevitably.

21:06And we've always done a good job, I think, of keeping work and non-work separate. But whenever there have been situations where good friends of mine were going to be let go, and even though they didn't work directly for me, I actually managed that conversation myself because I felt it was just the right thing to do in the circumstances. So yeah, that's tough as well. One of the toughest, I would say, is because if you've kind of got two teams you're bringing together and you're keeping 80 % and letting go 20%, there is a kind of performance element that comes into that. Ultimately, the higher performers are the ones you're likely to keep.

21:46But it's where you close the site down. So quite often when you bring businesses together, you decide, right, we no longer want a site in XYZ city. And that normally means virtually everyone in that site, irrespective of performance, is let go. And that's one of the toughest. When you stand up in front of a group of a couple of hundred people in a site and you say, look, delivering the news that that site is going to close, that's tough. That's tough. What's the worst decision you've ever made business-wise? Oh, that's a good call. I've made lots of bad decisions business-wise. So I think, I mean, a recent example probably would be the implementation of a new accounting standard, IFRS 17, where we were basically too late with the program.

22:40In my first three, four years with the company, I didn't get a single investor question on IFRS reporting at all. You run insurance companies on cash and capital, basically. And all our financial framework was geared around cash and capital. A new accounting standard was coming in. We didn't take it seriously enough. And we were late to the party and did not optimize it. And it definitely caused significant issues with the share price, with investor reaction. So I'd say that's probably one of the worst. And we're starting - Was that Andy Briggs' decision? um so i mean it's it's a it's a team decision but i'm the ceo so that's where the buck stops yeah so ultimately um you know the the the team on the ground doing the work was saying you know we need to do more of this but most of my teams are ambitious to want to do more so ultimately you know the board would say yeah likewise they they probably should have clocked it and been more challenging around the topic so we all learned we all learned a good deal from that

23:47we're going to make mistakes my team is going to make mistakes i make mistakes on a regular basis i do 15 hours of live telly i mean good i've probably made loads of you as well what's your attitude to making mistakes personally when you're in your decisions um so i think um you know if you never made any mistakes you wouldn't take any risks you wouldn't get any reward yeah and so to try and have a mistake-free environment would be suboptimal, no question. But I do think you need kind of judgment around it. So, you know, if you're, you know, one of the things we do is we test and learn and trial out different ways of engaging customers.

24:22Yeah. So, you know, I love it when the team tries something, it doesn't work, they learn something, they do something different, it does work. And the more they can do that more rapidly, the better. On the other hand, not prioritizing the IFRS 17 project early enough, that's a big mistake, and that's not acceptable. It had a big impact on the way the company was perceived in the market, and it's taken us a heck of a lot of hard work to recover that. So I think it depends on the nature and circumstance. And some mistakes are actually really good to learn and develop. other mistakes are more damaging and you want to try and avoid them.

25:03Professionally, what is the best thing, the standout best thing you've ever done? I'm going to give you two, if I may. Early on in my career, I made a real point of moving around regularly out of my comfort zone. So I started off in an actuary role. I then moved into customer service, then moved into marketing. I then moved into sales. At that point, I actually had two main board directors of Prudential Group ring me up and say, what the hell are you doing going into sales, Andy? One of the best things I did because I got much, much closer to customers. So getting that breadth of experience and seeing firsthand, but also throwing myself in the deep end and learning was hugely valuable.

25:41So I'd say that would be one. I think the other one I would say, and I guess I would say this, but was joining Phoenix. So as I was moving on from Aviva, I kind of was thinking, what do I want to do? I could have gone for, you know, tried to go for one of the bigger multinational insurance groups and look to run one of those. But actually, you know, Phoenix is the largest in the UK, but we are just UK based. But for me, that opportunity to build the company that just helps millions and millions more people get that better retirement was what attracted me and definitely one of my best decisions.

26:18It's really interesting. I know some CEOs, some I've interviewed for this show, others I haven't got on the show yet. And I know they're workaholics and I know that their family suffers. And I know that the weekends are not sacrosanct. And I know that even on a holiday, they're on their work laptop as well. That seems to me that you're giving up too much when you do that. You're giving up the family growing up. And then you just mentioned your fun time dad, but you clearly thrive on spending your spare time with your family. Yeah, very much so. I mean, different people have different approaches.

26:51What I've learned over time is I'm more effective as a leader if I am balanced. And there's been times in my career, inevitably, where you get into, you have to be, you're in crisis mode, you're in workaholic mode, but you kind of get more tired, the quality of decisions gets less good, the quality of leadership gets less good. So I've learned for myself that having that balance makes me more effective and perform better at work. I think COVID was definitely a huge wake-up call in many ways. I mean, I think back to those early days, Steve, it was quite scary. People I knew who I thought were fit and healthy were in hospitals, seriously ill, at risk of dying.

27:32Equally, I think it led us to reappraise sort of presenteeism. And actually, it's about delivering the outcomes rather than necessarily always traveling everywhere all the time. I mean, I still travel a huge amount, but certainly less than I did pre-COVID. So did it make you re-evaluate your life? So I've always had a decent back. But yes, in a number of ways it did. Certainly that sort of sense of presenteeism, the sense of always, you know, traveling everywhere all the time. I definitely get better balance with, you know, working at home some of the time, using video calls more often. and I think it's good for the carbon footprint but also getting up at four in the morning to get planes is again not great in terms of feeling your brightest and sharpest.

28:18But what do you do to keep yourself mentally and physically healthy? So I exercise a lot. So this morning I was doing a, my wife and I do a personal training session together with this excellent guy called Jay who, and we do kind of strength-based stuff. So that was 7 a.m. this morning. Do the same thing on Friday. I play quite a bit of golf, so I enjoy my golf and that's out in the fresh air. The family all play, so we play as a family. When do you take a call at the weekend? Is it habitually, rarely or only in crisis? So doing the job I do, you're always needing to check a couple of times a day, you know, emails and what's going on.

29:01but I'll only get involved in stuff on holiday at weekends if it absolutely needs to be done so I don't regularly work a chunk of time on a holiday if I'm on holiday I'm trying to recharge the batteries and spend time with the family it's actually I think really important as a leader to role model that as well because you know and I make a point of it in the organization that when I'm on holiday if I'm needed for something I'll absolutely be there that comes with the territory of the job but I'm not going to be working just just you know ordinarily through a holiday I want I want the team when they're on a holiday to relax and recharge final question what is your best quality all right and you can be as immodest as you like so I think um uh I think I probably would say just kind of as a leader, being authentic, being myself rather than trying to be something I'm not.