British Gas unit takes on banks

British Gas has set up a new division to oversee its push into

areas that could include products and services as diverse as savings

accounts and home security.

Centrica Financial Services (CFS), which launched internally this week,

will explore any areas into which British Gas might take its brand or

the Goldfish brand in the future.

Simon Waugh, group marketing director and managing director of the new

division, said it will look at ’any business area that adds significant

value to the customer’.

At least two new financial products are expected over the next six

months.

These are likely to be ventures with third parties, similar to the

Goldfish credit card, which British Gas jointly owns with the Household

Finance Corporation.

’While the new products and services will initially add value to our

energy customers, we hope to build businesses which generate real

revenue streams,’ said Waugh.

Waugh confirmed that new products will be developed under either the

British Gas or Goldfish brands, depending on which was the most

suitable.

Each initiative will get a ’significant’ marketing budget.

The division will have a marketing budget of around pounds 25m and Waugh

has appointed a team of four unit heads. Mike Parsons, presently

managing director of Goldbrand Developments, becomes director of banking

products, as well as CFS’s overall marketing director.

Rob Leonard, director of public gas transportation, becomes director of

insurance products at CFS; Paul Hallas, Centrica’s head of commercial

products, moves to director of direct-response products; while Doug

Richards, Centrica’s finance director, fills the same role for CFS. The

division will also recruit experts in strategic marketing.

All British Gas’s ’non-energy’ business activities are currently being

moved away from the existing businesses - British Gas Trading, British

Gas Services and Home Energy Centres - under the new division’s

umbrella.

This includes relationship marketing, a burning priority for British Gas

which faces losing up to 40% of its customers as the home-energy market

deregulates.

The move partly explains British Gas Trading’s decision to abandon its

planned customer loyalty points scheme. Carlson, Evans Hunt Scott and

Tullo Marshall Warren had been shortlisted to run a pounds 30m programme

next year.

This article was first published on Marketing