Less red tape please Mr Blair

Happy workers means a happy workplace, says Mr Stewart

Andrew Stewart has advised the life and pensions industry for more than 15 years.

After graduation he began his career at Accenture, where he remained for nine years.

In 1997, he left the business to form Troika with two colleagues - with Andrew taking the post of managing director - hoping to create a business that would challenge his rivals.

What was your first car?

A red Lancia Delta owned by a friend.

I found myself in the pub one time getting very depressed about car prices, didn't know who to turn to or trust for advice. But my friend offered me a good price.

However it wasn't a faithful car - it had the unnerving habit that sometimes if you were driving at 70mph the brakes would fail.

What was your first job?

Working for my father who was a chef. My parents ran a very successful Northamptonshire restaurant that we lived above.

I wasn't cut out to cook so I was paid £2-an-hour for washing up. We had lots of run-ins so my advice is not to work for your parents, although I do love them dearly.

What was your first house?

My sister and I were living in Fulham and couldn't afford a place in the area.

So we looked at Battersea and bought a three-bedroom house there for £130,000. It was the best investment I ever made as it was during the early 1990s and it doubled its price in two years.

Who is your biggest inspiration?

My father, and the reason is that he ran his restaurant on some very simple values - excellent food at a reasonable price with motivated staff.

That led to a full restaurant because of the good prices and happy staff - ultimately everyone was happy.

But no matter whether its a restaurant or not, those values are applicable to all businesses and I've tried to replicate them at Troika.

What's the best bit of business advice you've had?

Act on your gut reaction.

Nine times out of 10 I know the right answer from my instincts without too much fear.

At Troika I'm surrounded by good people who are able to spot the one time out of 10 when I am wrong.

What's the biggest challenge facing business now?

For any business it always comes back to motivated people and how to develop such motivated people.

If you achieve you're always successful and if you're motivated and the business has a positive internal culture, you can exceed customer expectations and get fantastic results. The only thing is to work out how to do that.

What issue in business is grabbing your interest right now?

The big thing, mainly in financial services, is "offshoring" - moving jobs overseas from the UK. Troika carried out a study that found 100,000 back office jobs will move to India in the next three to four years.

It's a massive issue for financial institutions, their staff and customers. Inevitably, most financial services will move offshore - the labour costs are significantly lower and the calibre of staff exceeds those in the UK.

Some firms will move the majority of such jobs overseas while others will move a smaller niche - its a massive change for businesses and their customers.

But its not at all without its problems - the right model for the offshore business must be driven by strategy, not just cost cuts.

It's not easy for firms to spend a lot of time with customers to find the right representation abroad. Usually such moves are a success - like Friends Provident - but some are executed poorly.

If needs to be thought through correctly, with businesses looking at it like setting up another operation, say in Dublin.

But there are emotional problems with such moves.

Staff lose their motivation and there is an emotional downside for customers - you can damage their loyalty deeply by making the wrong decision.

What can the government do to boost business?

If you were able to build UK business starting with a blank canvas you wouldn't repeat the excess management and bureaucracy we have.

A simple, straightforward business model, with a lean, efficient management structure is what we need.

What I object to is so much regulation - we now have regulations that create checks on checks.

The government needs to do more to bring in a simpler more straightforward way to do things. For example, the amount of rules covering financial products - its a poor process that now regulates that poor process. The government needs to improve that.

What was the proudest moment of your career?

I think that was hitting our initial five year plan. Setting up was difficult and although we had a clear idea of what the market needed, we weren't sure how successful it would be.

So we agreed to a target of doubling our business every year.

When we delivered that planned strategy we held an annual conference to celebrate the achievement.

Looking at the team's delight, their smiling faces and their belief in Troika was a fantastic moment - but it was also a lot of fun on the way.

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Financial Services consultancy Troika was set founded by Mr Stewart, Richard Vale and Neil Mayall in 1998.

It helps clients - including Barclays, JP Morgan Fleming, HSBC and Axa - achieve large scale changes by getting the most out of their existing organisation and resources.

Employing around 30 staff, the company expects to generate revenues of £6m this year.