Ep. 2 - What Is CX and Who Should Own It?

Competitive CX | Conversations for Financial Services Professionals Tackling Client Experience Challenges

Supercharge your financial services strategy by discovering what client experience (CX) really means—and why having the right CX ownership is the key to sustained competitive advantage. In this episode of Competitive CX, host Melanie Aimer is joined by industry leaders Hamish Taylor (award-winning former CEO and master of customer-led transformation) and Adam Grainger (CX measurement innovator and founder of Accomplished) to dig deep into the definition, scope, and critical ownership questions around CX.

Learn why top-performing firms treat CX as a cross-functional, end-to-end capability—rather than just a support function or a one-off initiative—and how embedding true CX leadership at the executive level drives real business results. With candid real-world examples, hard-won lessons, and actionable advice, this episode will empower you to move beyond surface-level improvements and build a client experience that wins loyalty, retention, and growth. Perfect for financial services professionals in marketing, sales, client service, or strategy seeking practical ways to drive CX transformation in their own organizations.

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• Defining client experience (CX) in finance
• Cross-functional coordination for CX success
• Measuring tangible CX business outcomes
• Leadership accountability in CX strategy
• Exceeding client expectations in financial services

Timestamps:

00:00 "Defining and Owning Client Experience"

04:27 Measuring CX Impact

09:12 "CX Ownership and Strategic Value"

12:12 "Customer Experience Determines Success"

13:36 "Rethinking Customer Experience"

17:24 "Leadership-Driven CX Strategy"

21:54 Elevating Client Experience Expectations

24:48 Challenging Timidity in Financial CX

27:48 "Championing Client Experience Leadership"

30:04 "Boosting Client Engagement Insights"
About the Competitive CX Hosts

Hamish Taylor

Hamish Taylor is a world leader in Customer-led Transformations. A multi-award winning CEO, his career has taken him from Brand Management at Procter and Gamble, Consultancy at PWC and Head of Brands at BA to become CEO of channel tunnel railway Eurostar and CEO of Sainsbury’s Bank – all before he was 40. In each case he left a record of significant growth by challenging the established way of operating and, in particular, by enabling the organisation to place its customers at the core of all activities. More recently, he has taken his “Customer-led Transformation” approach to hundreds of organisations and teams in 48 different countries. He has also been dubbed the “MasterThief” for his ability to take ideas from one industry or discipline to another.

Melanie Aimer

Melanie has over 20 years of financial services experience spanning Capital Markets, Corporate & Investment Banking, Asset Management, Private Bank & Wealth Management with Citibank, BNP Paribas and Barclays. With her vast multinational corporate Board and Exco level experience, Melanie has an award-winning record of delivering innovative client transformation across the full client and customer value-chain delivering best-in-class services in complex global organizations in a cost-effective agile manner and simplifying front to back processes spanning across people, marketing, data, and digital.

Adam Grainger

After a career leading client experience (CX) transformations for large and medium-sized asset management firms, Adam established Accomplish to translate CX for asset managers into a tangible and measurable discipline. Between 2018 and 2021, Adam chaired the global Asset Management CX Forum. This was an industry-wide innovation initiative that resulted in Accomplish’s Client Behavior Benchmark that lets asset managers pinpoint, in time and money, where their pre- and post-sales experience has out and underperformed. Adam has an MBA from the London Business School, where he studied behavioral economics and decision-making.

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