Deposed chief executive replaced with former EY advisor

A FORMER employee has been brought back into the fold at CPP to replace deposed chief executive Steven Callaghan.

The assistance business has returned to the control of founder Hamish Ogston, who presided over the company when it was fined £10.5m by the Financial Conduct Authority and was forced to pay out £65.8m in compensation to customers.

Jason Walsh will be taking over Mr Callaghan’s role following the successful boardroom coup yesterday, in which 43% owner Mr Ogston supported by asset managers Schroders (who own 10% of the company) replaced four existing members of the management team.

They included Mr Callaghan, non-executive chairman Roger Canham, and non-executive directors Shaun Astley-Stone and Abhai Rajguru.

They will be replaced by Sir Richard Lapthorne, Nick Cooper and Mark Hamlin.

Mr Walsh will take over as chief executive officer of the group from 16 May 2016, and as a director on the board following the group’s AGM on 18 May 2016.

He was an employee of the group between 2002 and July 2014, employed as managing director of its UK insurance business.

More recently, he has been working for EY within its financial services advisory practice in a role for one of its major UK banking clients, focusing on regulatory and remediation programmes.

Sir Richard Lapthorne, chairman, commented: “We are delighted to have secured Jason’s services as CPP’s Chief Executive Officer. CPP has been through a difficult period and we must now focus on rebuilding the business – retaining what is great about the company as well as branching out and expanding into new areas.”

Mr Walsh said: “Much good work has already been done to rebuild the business over the last few years; the company is on a much firmer financial footing but we now need to add pace to the business transformation plans, get new products to market, develop existing and create new business partner relationships, create a competitive advantage in our digital offering, as well as work with the FCA and PRA in order to restore the Group’s UK trading permissions as an essential enabler for our goal of achieving better long term performance.”