As Director of Credit and Banking at John Lewis Money, Andy Piggott is responsible for the end-to-end performance of the credit and banking products offered by the financial services arm of the John Lewis Partnership, owner and operator of John Lewis and Waitrose, two of Britain's most enduring and respected retail brands. Established over a century ago, the Partnership is one of the largest employee-owned businesses in the UK and maintains a mission to create a fairer and more sustainable future for its employees, customers, suppliers and communities. 

Andy began his career as a strategy consultant, before moving to Lloyds Banking Group, where he worked across strategy, product and commercial management areas, including in current accounts. He went on to join TSB Bank, where he ran both the current accounts and the credit cards businesses, before becoming Director of Lending Products at Metro Bank (UK) with a focus on both consumer and small business customers. Prior to joining the John Lewis Partnership, Andy was most recently Chief Product Officer at TransUnion, the UK’s second largest credit reference agency, responsible for credit, fraud and decisioning solutions.

Paul Riseborough: Andy, welcome. I think it is worth us beginning by briefly focusing on just what makes John Lewis – and by extension its financial services business – so unique. It is a brand that holds a particular place in the hearts of the British public, given its storied history and strong reputation for quality and customer service. It also has a quite unique ownership and operating structure that connects directly to many of the themes and opportunities that we are going to discuss today.

Andy Piggott: Absolutely. The John Lewis Partnership is a democratically-owned organisation – as employees, we're all Partners with shared responsibilities and benefits. The structure of the Partnership means that the organisation can’t do things which are not in line with our stated values. We have a Partnership Council that represents all the individual Partners, reflecting their opinions and discussing, influencing and making recommendations on policy development, and shares in making decisions about the governance of the Partnership. I've worked for lots of other organisations with strong corporate values and which do many good things – but the Partnership is definitely at another level in terms of living by its values.




Within the financial services business at John Lewis, we have an insurance value stream and then a credit and banking one, which is what I oversee. We offer a credit card, point of sale credit, personal loans, savings and investments, and foreign exchange (travel money and international payments). A pretty broad range, which are all at quite different stages of evolution. For example, John Lewis has offered credit cards for 20 years, whereas some of the other products are newer ventures for us. Credit cards remain our biggest product – we have around a million credit card customers, with one and a half million customers interacting with our wider range of products. 

Paul Riseborough: As well as being established as a Partnership yourselves, partnerships with other providers also play a big part in how the financial services business operates, correct?

Andy Piggott: Yes. We don't hold deposits, but as a limited credit broker we partner with a single financial services provider in each of our product categories, and curate the best elements of what those partners have to offer. We essentially do the ‘money thinking’ for our customers: we identify what we consider best in market products and then serve those to customers under the John Lewis Money branding, always making it very clear that we are not the manufacturer. 

For example, we partner with Clearpay, a really fast growing Buy Now Pay Later provider, as we saw a gap for short term and really flexible credit for our customers, and we partner with Zopa, an online bank that offers personal loans. We also partner with large banks as well – our point of sale credit is provided by Creation Finance, which is part of BNP Paribas Personal Finance.

Paul Riseborough: So you're effectively using your brand strength and your financial services smarts to choose the best value deals and the best product structures, for the benefit of your members.

Andy Piggott: Exactly right. The extent to which we get involved in product design and so on does vary, but on some of our core products we are very closely involved. It's so important to us that products are distinctly ‘John Lewis’.

Paul Riseborough: A lot of companies, particularly in financial services, rather struggle with that brand dimension. They can come up with innovative products, great digital interfaces and all the rest, but ultimately their brand does not inspire people. By contrast you are in the position of having one of the most prestigious, aspirational and well-regarded brands in the market.

Andy Piggott: Yes, we have an enormous opportunity because of the power of the John Lewis and Waitrose brands. I would argue our brands are unparalleled in the kind of relationship they enjoy with customers. We're already a decent scale business in financial services, but it definitely feels there is much more for us to go after and also to do things in a different way – in a John Lewis way – to meet customers’ needs.

Paul Riseborough: How do you think about financial services customers at John Lewis? You've already got customers across various product verticals, so how does that flow into the overall John Lewis strategy?

Andy Piggott: In terms of our financial services strategy overall, there are four parts to what we're looking to achieve in terms of delivering a different type of business to create long term sustainable growth for the Partnership. Number one is to move financial services from being slightly on the side to becoming a third profit-driving and scalable pillar of the Partnership alongside the two existing retail brands. The second part relates to the Partnership’s customers. Between the John Lewis and Waitrose brands, we have over 20 million customers of the Partnership. Our focus is on meeting the money needs of those customers.

That leads to the third element of the strategy – helping customers to buy products from the Partnership. Whether that's their weekly shopping at Waitrose or the more discretionary  purchases that you would buy from John Lewis, we are looking to reward customers for their loyalty to those brands. And the final part comes back to reinforcing all the great things that the John Lewis and Waitrose brands are famous for – being respected, being fair, being value for money for customers. Those are critical for us from a financial services perspective.

Paul Riseborough: You're to some degree in a closed-loop system, helping your customers to buy from the partnership and to interact with the brand. To what degree does a John Lewis Money customer differ from any other financial services customer that you’ve come across in your career? What characteristics maybe stand out versus a normal High Street banking customer?

Andy Piggott: The fundamental needs of our customers are pretty similar to what you see in other financial services organisations. Where it gets interesting comes back to the brands and the relationship the customers have with the brands. 

One of the big advantages the big traditional banks have had for a long time is trust. They've been around for such a long time. People know them, know their money is safe with them, and therefore by default stay with them and take other products from them. We're one of the very few organisations who can challenge that level of trusted relationship. The trust in our brands gives us a licence to talk to those customers about their financial needs. 

So there's something  of an open door there – but there is a flip side to that. Quite rightly it means enormous expectations from customers. The trusted relationship they have with John Lewis and Waitrose doesn't happen by accident. It is the result of consistently doing the right things for customers over a really long period of time. So naturally when it comes to financial services products that the Partnership has put our name to – even if they are not manufactured by us – then customers expect us to meet that high standard. So it is absolutely critical within the financial services business to make sure we can live up to that.

Paul Riseborough: How does that manifest itself? In previous interviews in this series we have talked about the relationship between transforming the customer experience and the values that underpin the business.

Andy Piggott: It is less about the product and more about the service experience that goes around it. Of course, the product is really important – it has to meet all the customer’s needs and perhaps give them something extra. For example, our Partnership Credit Card – which is our biggest single product – gives customers rewards for shopping anywhere, but extra benefits for shopping within the Partnership.

Now, that’s a good way of attracting customers, but on its own it is not enough to retain them. The real test is how you interact with customers when they come onboard. Because we are not the manufacturer,  the number one consideration when we're selecting our partners is the customer experience they can provide. 

NewDay is our partner on credit cards, and there was enormous focus and investment on their side to ensure their customer servicing capabilities were up to the very high standards that we see as acceptable. And when it comes to customer satisfaction levels it is all really positive, so that investment was well worth it – our customer attrition levels are massively lower than anywhere else. 

Paul Riseborough: This intelligent curation of the best players… I can't think of another brand that would have that level of influence to be able to pick best in breed and have those providers bend over backwards to support what you want to achieve. That is a genuinely unique thing.

Andy Piggott: Yes, there is so much opportunity and scope if we do it in the right way. It's a great offering for customers, it's great for our business, and it's great for our partners – obviously any relationship we enter into we want to make work for our partners as well; we want it to be sustainable. So it is genuinely differentiated from what else is available out there.

Paul Riseborough: How do you ensure the digital experience that you provide customers stays coherent?

Andy Piggott: At the point of acquisition and subsequent servicing you need to make it a seamless digital experience that is easy for customers. The Partnership Card is a really good example – there's a great mobile app that we have there. The key thing is maintaining a cadence of iteration, improvement and innovation – small tweaks here and there that incrementally make things better for customers on an ongoing basis. For example, we recently launched a function within the app where you can click on a transaction and see a little map showing where it took place, what the brand was, and further details about what was purchased. 

It is important to ensure that digital engagement is as easy as possible. It is an interesting dynamic we have – our customers tend to be a little bit older than the market average but they are also very willing to embrace digital technology. There's a bit of a perception that not all customers are willing to engage on the digital side, but we certainly don’t see that. Yes, many of our customers do want to be able to talk to a human being as well, and that's absolutely something we offer. But on a day to day basis, easy access to really compelling digital experiences is critical.

Paul Riseborough: Your demographic does skew slightly older, and perhaps also slightly wealthier – is that driving the features roadmap for your products?

Andy Piggott: Certainly, we do targeted research to understand what is important to that demographic, what makes them feel secure in managing their money with us. But those customers do not make up all our existing customers, so it is not only just about a single demographic. We have many new customers coming into the Partnership who are at different stages of their life journey. 

John Lewis has the ‘ANYDAY’ range in its retail stores and website, and that is how we're thinking about additional financial services products that we're bringing in. You're not compromising on the quality, but the products are a little more accessible. So we're looking at how we can apply those principles to financial services too.

Paul Riseborough: Stepping back, what you do you think is going to happen to the market when you look at the possibilities out there: new technologies, using data more effectively, the ability to have a more personalised offering, GenAI and the ability to have more authentic, empathetic service layers, whether through agents or better workflows in the contact centre?

Andy Piggott: There is a lot of technology and data-driven opportunity, though sometimes there's a risk that it is pursued for its own sake rather than because it's the right choice for customers. Personalisation is absolutely key – for a long time, financial services got by with very vanilla, almost commodity type products. Data is key to that, to informing better decisions for the customer. The nature of data that we hold in particular presents really exciting options – we know what you're spending in the Partnership and elsewhere. 

We have the best financial services type data and the best retail type data, and there’s so much opportunity from marrying that together to make sure that we engage in a properly personalised way with our customers. We're at the early stages of that at the moment, and by no means have a fully developed solution to leverage all of that – plus we always need to make sure that data is being used in the right way and for the right reasons. 

Given our values, there is an extra onus on us to make sure that what we are doing is in the best interest of our customers. Ultimately though it's about offering them a more tailored and hence valuable proposition – and given the bond of trust we have established I believe they would be open to that.