Aurie Styla (right) and Aviva’s Simon Ellis (left) present the award to Barnett Waddingham’s David Collington (centre left) and Eamonn Ash (centre right)
As part of our series looking at what firms did to win their accolades at the WSB Awards 2023, WSB talks to Barnett Waddingham partner and head of benefit consulting David Collington about how the firm won the Employee Benefits Consultant of the Year category.
What does it mean to win this award?
We were absolutely delighted to be named ‘Employee Benefit Consultant of the Year' for the second year in a row. It is always humbling to win an industry-recognised award, as it spotlights not only the work that all our teams put in, but also the satisfaction our clients have with what we do and the outcomes we achieve in partnership with them.
What do you believe sets you apart from your peers?
Our independence and partnership approach means we are free to think differently and control our own future, for the benefit of BW and our clients. We are passionate about sustainability and innovation, and we have integrated both as standard across our services, helping our clients to make a difference. Our actuarial heritage also means we can use these capabilities, together with our in-house software development teams, to combine data, tech and subject matter experts in one team. This helps us with streamlining innovation, client delivery and our ability to diversify what we offer to our clients in order to deliver better outcomes for them.
What are the key challenges facing your clients and how are you helping them address them?
The legacy of Covid, the cost-of-living crisis, labour shortages, digital transformation and the impact of AI are all challenges that our clients continue to face, and we are helping help them to identify what is key for their own business and to focus on this. We establish what their objectives are and how our services, especially around people, can help them to mitigate risk, improve their business resilience and better understand the return on investment on developing people centric initiatives.
We will continue to invest in people and technology developments to support the delivery of employee fulfilment, not only internally, but also for our clients' workforces, helping employers to thrive in these challenging times.
How will you continue to improve your services to clients over the coming 12 months?
We will continue to do what we are doing - we will listen to our clients and continue to deepen our relationships with them in order to understand their challenges and be able to put ourselves in their shoes. We call this understanding the ‘Employer DNA'. This all feeds into improving the services we provide, while also highlighting areas for diversification and innovation. Seeking feedback is continuous within BW, as is having plans in place to turn feedback into positive action.
The winners of the 11th anniversary Workplace Savings and Benefits Awards were announced at an event held at London's Marriott Grosvenor Square on 7 September. To see the full list of winners and find out more about the awards, visit: wsbawards.co.uk
