Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (chair)
Wilf Stevenson is Chair of StepChange Debt Charity.
He joined the House of Lords in July 2010, and has recently been appointed Opposition spokesman on Culture; and on Higher Education and Trade. He is also a whip for the Home Office and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Recent work has included membership of the Communications Select Committee (2010-2011).
Prior to being appointed to the House of Lords, Wilf Stevenson spent two years as a special adviser to the Prime Minister, working in the Policy Unit, 10 Downing Street; and before that nearly 11 years as the Director of the Smith Institute, an independent Think Tank. Before establishing the Smith Institute, Wilf Stevenson was Director of the British Film Institute (1987-97), joining the BFI from what is now Edinburgh Napier University.
Jeremy Burton
Jeremy is a trustee of several charities based in the Leeds area. He is Honorary French Consul in Leeds and is also a founding trustee.
David Coates
David is a financial services specialist whose speciality is helping businesses develop. He joined Experian as managing director of the Business Information and Consumer Information divisions. In 2000, he was appointed managing director and founding director of Callcredit in Leeds. In 2004 he joined the private equity backed company Davenham as chief executive and took the group public in 2005. He currently serves as a non-executive director of The Richmond Group.
Mike Fairey
Mike Fairey served as deputy group chief executive officer of Lloyds TSB Group PLC from 1998 until June 2008 when he retired. He originally joined Barclays Bank in 1967 and held a number of senior and general management appointments, including managing director of Barclays Direct Lending Services from 1990 to 1991.
Mike joined TSB Group in 1991 and held a number of senior and director positions as the banks merged and Lloyds TSB Group grew substantially, culminating in his position as deputy group chief executive.
Sue Lewis
Currently an independent consultant, Sue was previously a senior civil servant, most recently as head of savings and investments at the Treasury, from 2005 to 2011. Her responsibilities in this role included policy on savings and investment markets, mutual financial institutions, corporate governance, financial capability and financial inclusion.
Sue has also held senior roles in the Department for Education and the Cabinet Office. As well as financial services, she has worked in a wide variety of policy areas including early years, children and young people, and gender equality. She also led the team supporting Don Cruickshank's independent review into competition in banking markets.
She is currently a trustee of the Personal Finance Education Group, and a Consumer Advocate Member of the Chartered Insurance Institute Professional Standards Board.
Sir Geoff Mulcahy
Sir Geoff has a long and distinguished career in retailing that began in 1982 when, after working in the sugar, engineering and oil industries, he joined Kingfisher. He became group managing director of Kingfisher in 1984 and retired as chief executive in 2002 after building it into the largest non-food retailer in the UK, operating in 13 countries worldwide and overseeing the group's demerger into three quoted companies.
He is currently chairman of Javelin Group, a retail consultancy, and a non executive director of Instore plc and The Home World. He has degrees from Manchester University and Harvard Business School. Sir Geoff was knighted in 1993 and became chairman of the British Retail Consortium in July 2006.
Danielle Walker Palmour
Danielle has been director of the Friends Provident Foundation since November 2004. Before that she spent six years as director of policy and practice at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
She has worked in various senior policy and research roles throughout the non-governmental sector, including as head of policy of what is now The Big Lottery Fund, at the Commission for Racial Equality and at the Law Society of England and Wales. She was a member of the Treasury’s Financial Inclusion Taskforce (2005- 2011) and the FSA’s Financial Capability Steering Group. Currently, she is a non-executive director of Big Society Capital alongside other voluntary sector positions.
Daniel Phelan
Daniel Phelan is editor-in-chief of Civil Society Media which publishes the magazines Charity Finance, Professional Fundraising and Governance. He founded the Charity Awards, an annual UK wide programme recognising excellence in charity management.
Suzanna Taverne
Suzanna has broad experience at board level of strategic development and organisational change, working across public and private sectors in senior management, strategy and financial roles. Suzanna is currently a trustee of the BBC, a non-executive director of Ford Financial Europe and a Trustee of the Shakespeare Schools Festival. Until recently, she was a non-executive director of the Nationwide Building Society and chair of Gingerbread.
Otto Thoresen
Otto is the Director General of the Association of British Insurers. Prior to this he was Chief Executive of AEGON UK and a member of the Group Management Board of AEGON NV.
Otto has been one of the industry’s leading figures advising government and regulators on consumer issues. In 2007, he led a review for HM Treasury on generic financial advice which was published in 2008 with its recommendations accepted by the Government, resulting in the creation of the Money Advice Service. He is Chairman of the Personal Finance Education Group which is the UK’s leading finance education organisation. In Scotland, he sits on the Advisory Panel of Edinburgh University Business School and is a special adviser to the Board of Citizens Advice Edinburgh.
