The Judging Panel

Nick Baker
General Manager, director, Adventis NMG Resources

Nick is a marketing professional with more than 20 years’ experience in financial services, including financial services consultancy and client-side experience in blue-chip companies such as Barclays and Aetna, and agency experience with clients spanning banking, life offices, insurers and investment companies. He has expertise in strategic marketing and marketing communications, brand development and design of propositions, products and customer experiences. Nick is an associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute.

Danby Bloch
Managing director, Taxbriefs Financial Publishing

Danby has written three books on financial planning and innumerable articles for the UK national and trade press. He is also a regular lecturer and trainer on tax and financial subjects. Tax briefs Financial Publishing produces many of the UK’s Chartered Insurance Institute’s examination learning texts and also customises newsletters and other publications for financial advisers and accountants. Danby is chairman of London IFAs Helm Godfrey and has been in financial services for over 30 years. He is also Pro-Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2004.

Ray Boulger
Senior technical manager, Charcol

Ray joined John Charcol in 1989 after training as a chartered accountant and then spending 18 years as a stockbroker. He has been technical manager, then senior manager at Charcol for nine years. He is also joint deputy chairman of the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries (AMI), which he joined at its inception in February 2003. Ray has received a slew of industry awards, including Guru of the Year at the Headline Money awards in 2005, and is a regular fixture on TV programmes such as Panorama and the Money Programme. A former mayor of East Grinstead, he is married with four children and eight grandchildren.

Kevin Carr
Head of protection strategy, Lifesearch

With three years as a high-street mortgage adviser under his belt, Kevin has 14 years’ experience in financial services and has specialised in protection since joining LifeSearch as an adviser in 2000.

A qualified IFA and mortgage adviser, Kevin heads up LifeSearch’s technical department, speaks regularly to the media on all matters related to protection, and also manages the company’s sales relationship with each product provider.

A keen musician and football fan, Kevin plays guitar in a rock and pop covers band and supports Arsenal with a passion. In 2006 he was voted the UK’s best financial services press officer and Financial Adviser’s protection adviser of the year, and in 2007 Kevin was voted the UK’s best protection press officer for the third year running.

Andy Couchman
Managing director, Bank House Communications

Andy is a commentator and consultant on the health and protection and mortgage markets. He has written a number of books and reports and works on strategy and communications with many of the leading names in these sectors.

Maggie Craig
Director of Life and Savings, Association of British Insurers

Maggie Craig joined the ABI in July 2007, from Standard Life Assurance Ltd. Maggie had two stints at Standard Life, as Head of Pensions Policy from 1989-2000 and as Head of Public Affairs and Communication from 2003-2007. In between, she was Pensions Development Manager for Scottish Equitable. All these roles involved a wide variety of lobbying, policy and media work. Maggie has been in financial services since graduating from Glasgow University in 1979. She has worked for an employee benefits consultancy, as an IFA and on secondment to the Department of Work and Pensions, as well as for Standard Life and Scottish Equitable. Her knowledge and experience of financial services and pensions policy issues is extensive. Maggie has put that experience to excellent use on several ABI committees and working groups, and she represented the ABI as a member of Alan Pickering’s pensions simplification review team. She has also contributed to many other legislative and regulatory consultations, including the Pensions Act 1995 and the FSA’s Treating Customers Fairly. Maggie is married with several daughters and a variety of animals.

Huw Davies
MBA, BSC and Chartered Financial Planner

Huw is now in his 20th year in the financial services industry and has spent the last six developing the corporate benefits service of Baigrie Davies. In 2006 he gained an MBA from the University of Liverpool with a thesis focused on employee appreciation of the benefits package. He has worked with a wide range of corporate clients on their benefits packages with a particular focus on protection policies.

Tim Eadon
Chief executive, the Personal Finance Society

Tim was appointed CEO of the Personal Finance Society (PFS) in June 2006. The PFS is the UK’s largest professional body for financial planners, advisers and those in associated roles, with some 23,000 members.
Tim started his Financial Services career in 1995, having various management roles with Commercial Union, CGU and Norwich Union, and more recently heading up the in-house IFA at Sesame. He achieved his MBA in 2005 and became a Chartered Financial Planner in March 2007.

Jonathan Fry
Chief executive, Wills & Co

Jonathan joined Wills & Co, a leading independent private client stockbroker and smaller company specialist, in February 2007. Previously, he was founder and managing director of fund manager Premier Asset Management. While at Premier he was responsible for both the management of investment portfolios and funds, as well as for the development of new products. Jonathan started his investment career as a private client portfolio manager with a London based brokerage in 1984, having completed an honours degree in Business. He holds the IIMR Investment Management Certificate.

Chris Gilchrist
Editorial director, Everyinvestor

Chris Gilchrist is a financial journalist, author and editor with over 30 years’ experience in this field. He entered financial journalism from university in 1970 and has written extensively for national newspapers and magazines including the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Investors Chronicle and Sunday Times and contributed to personal finance series on BBC Radio 4, BBC1 and Channel 4. He was editorial director of What Investment and associated magazines and newsletters from 1982 to 1988. Chris currently edits a stockmarket newsletter, The IRS Report, is a director of Churchill Investments plc, a firm of independent financial advisers he co-founded in 1996, and is editorial director of personal finance website www.everyinvestor.co.uk, which he set up in 2002.

Sarah Godfrey
Associate editor, Incisive Media investment division

Sarah joined Incisive Media in 2006 as editor of Bloomberg Money. Since the magazine’s closure she has worked across the brands of Incisive’s investment division, which include Investment Week and Professional Adviser. After working as editorial production manager at Charterhouse Communications, she joined Fund Strategy magazine at its launch, becoming associate editor. Sarah was the chair of the judging panel for last year’s Online Finance Awards.

Johanna Gornitzki
Editor, Cover Magazine

Johanna Gornitzki is the editor of Cover magazine and has worked on the publication for nearly three years. Prior to Cover, Johanna worked as a reporter for financial adviser website, IFAonline. She previously worked for The Sunday Telegraph Magazine as an editorial assistant. Last year, she won the best trade journalist award in the Financial Healthcare category at the Medical Journalism Awards.

Lawrence Gosling
Group editorial director, Incisive Media

Lawrence Gosling is the group editorial director of Incisive Media and the founding editor of Investment Week, for which he stills writes a weekly column, Gosling's Grouse. He was also the launch editor of IFAonline, and Mortgage Solutions, Cover and Bloomberg Money magazines, and one of the original judges for the Gold Standards.

Malcolm Kerr
Director, Ernst & Young

Malcolm Kerr is a director within Ernst & Young's UK Financial Services division providing advice to the key providers in the life, pensions and retail investment markets and to major intermediaries. Before moving into professional services some 10 years ago, Malcolm held a number of senior executive and board positions in the industry including IFA director at Canada Life(UK), vice-president of MetLife (US) and chairman of Albany International (IOM).

Julian Marr
Editorial Director, Incisive Media Investment Division
Chair of the judging panel

Julian Marr is editorial director of Incisive Media’s investment division, which includes IFAonline, Investment Week and Professional Adviser. In past lives he has been both editor and publisher of consumer finance title Bloomberg Money and deputy editor of trade weekly Investment Adviser. He was once a lawyer but that really was a long, long time ago.

Anne McMeehan
Director, Cauldron Consulting

Anne has worked in the UK financial services industry for 30 years. She is a founder director of Cauldron Consulting and a non-executive director of JPMorgan Claverhouse investment trust. Previously she was director of communications at the Association of Unit Trusts and Investment Funds (Autif), the then trade association for the UK investment funds industry, and prior to that a main board director of Framlington and managing director of its unit trust subsidiary. For some of this period she was also deputy chairman of Autif. Her earlier career was with Arbuthnot Latham and Hambro Life.

Mike Morrison
Strategy pension manager, Winterthur Life

Mike joined Winterthur in 1990 and is Winterthur Life strategy pension manager.
In his role at Winterthur Life, Mike liases with various industry bodies with regard to developing pension products and their accessibility to consumers. He is on the Money Purchase sub-committee and the committee of the Association of Member Directed Pension Schemes (AMPS), in addition to being an Associate of the Pensions Management Institute.He is a regular speaker at industry events and in the past has spoken for SIFA, IFP, ASIM amongst others.

Helen Morrissey
Editor, Retirement Planner

Helen had edited Retirement Planner magazine since August 2006. Prior to this she was features editor on Professional Pensions the leading weekly institutional pensions title for more than two years.

Mike Richards
Chairman, Capital City Media

Mike started his advertising career as a messenger at McCann Erickson in 1975. He has since progressed, although still happy to deliver things for clients, and now is the chairman of Capital City Media. This will be the fifth year Mike has judged the Gold Standard awards and he is still waiting for the new carpet Lawrence Gosling promised when it all started. He has also helped out on other Incisive Media activities including fetching Tim Weller’s dry cleaning for four successive years. Mike is scared of thunder and pigeons. He owns a season ticket to Bayern Munich Football Club.