New Chief Financial Officer appointed at Metropolitan Retail

Metropolitan has appointed Shaun Lawton as Chief Financial Officer for Metropolitan Retail with immediate effect. Shaun replaces Mike McDougall, who left Metropolitan at the end of November 2012 to take up the position of CEO of the Actuarial Society of

Metropolitan Retail CEO, Phillip Matlakala, said “the company was looking forward to Shaun continuing his good work, as he comes with a wealth of actuarial experience having led teams of actuaries at prominent companies in the UK for the past 14 years and has already made a significant impact in the business.”

The new CFO has worked for an extensive list of companies from Liverpool Victoria (LV=) in Bournemouth, UK from November 2010 to August 2012. He plied his trade at Legal & General Assurance Society, Kingswood, UK from January 2008 to October 2010, and was at Deloitte, London, UK, from September 1999 to December 2007. He was at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, London, UK, from October 1998 to September 1999, before that he was at Momentum Life, Centurion, South Africa , from January 1996 to October 1998.

Lawton joined Metropolitan Retail in September 2012 as the Head of Actuarial for six months before taking up this new role. In preparing for his role at Metropolitan, he experienced working closely with corporate finance areas, regularly meeting people at various levels in those organisations. This exposure assisted the new CFO immensely to pitch his communication at different levels.

“A key trait of someone in my position is to communicate actuarial concepts, techniques and jargon to people without the same level of financial knowledge. It’s important that business partners and customers don’t view the actuarial side of a company as a ‘black hole’ and something that only happens in the background,” reiterated Lawton.

One of the top priorities Lawton will be focusing on during the next year is to make sure that the CFO division provides standardised and consistent information that everyone understands to the rest of Metropolitan Retail.

“We interpret the information that is distributed to other business areas, thereby delivering an essential service. I do feel that there is currently an information overload. We’ll need to go back to the basics and establish what the business really needs. We have to ensure that we offer a ‘single source of the truth’ when it comes to business information at all times,” said Lawton.