Meet Caroline - FSCS CEO and mature talent advocate

Age-friendly Employer: FSCS

Caroline Rainbird

Business Leader

Caroline Rainbird

Current role: Chief Executive Officer
Time at FSCS: 10 months

Having lived through the arrival of mobile phones and social media, Caroline knows that the next big leap could be around the corner at any minute. She made her own big leap when she left the security of a long-term post. Now, as CEO of FSCS, she shares her thoughts on the value of taking a break and cultivating an age-diverse workforce.

Leaving my last job was the biggest risk I’ve ever taken, but also the bravest and best thing I’ve ever done. I’d been with RBS for 24 years and could probably have stayed for another five years. But I felt it was time to move on.

The holiday job that launched a career

My career in the banking sector started when I was looking for a holiday job while I was studying History at the University of Kent. I flooded employers across Colchester with applications and ended up working at Barclays Bank. I enjoyed that job so much that I decided to go into financial services when I graduated. From 1995 to 2009 I worked at ABN AMRO, undertaking a number of leadership and transactional roles within Group Shared Services, Finance, Change Management and Structured Finance. Then from 2009 to 2017, I held senior positions at RBS, working as Director of their Corporate Services Division and then as their Managing Director of Regulatory Affairs.

An age-diverse workforce is a no-brainer

In general, people tend to have a blinkered view on an ageing workforce, seeing it as a negative factor. But for me, it’s an absolute no-brainer to promote and encourage age-diversity. In any organisation, customers come in all shapes and sizes. So if you don’t have a diverse workforce, you can’t properly serve that diverse customer base. That’s particularly true at FSCS, where many of our customers are retired and contact us due to concerns about their pension. If they can talk to someone within FSCS who is also older and has a wide range of life experiences, I believe they will receive a better quality of service.

Diversity is the springboard for new ideas

It’s also really important to have diverse views at all levels in an organisation. No one person has the same set of experiences, so diversity in every sense, including age diversity, ensures the organisation can benefit from different views, different minds and different cultures. That’s how we generate new ideas, spot opportunities and make changes that will help us stay relevant in the future.

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Turning my back on my comfort zone

After almost 25 years with RBS, I decided to take a new direction. Having worked for one organisation for such a long period of time, though, it was daunting. It took me from a place of comfort where I was well-known and well-regarded to being a stay-at-home mum. At first, having worked non-stop, I didn’t quite know what to do. So I decided to approach it as a project: decide what I was going to do next and how I was going to do it.

The best advice? Take some time to think about what’s next

The best advice I received was not to think about my next step for the first two or three months. As one friend said: “Don’t think about it for the first few months, enjoy a bit of time out. Then just talk to people and start looking at what else is out there.” It was definitely the right approach not to rush into anything. For somebody who’s worked for 30 years, there’s a clear temptation to think, “I need to move on to the next thing – fast!”

Exploring my options – from non-exec to author

Gradually, I started exploring my options, from paid employment to becoming a non-exec, to retraining or doing something completely different. One idea was to write a book. I wrote all the ideas down on a piece of paper. After some reflection, I decided what was and wasn’t for me, and started forming a plan.

I was lucky that I had the time to think things over as it takes a while to move away from being part of a big corporate machine. My identity was tied to that job and I’d forgotten who I was outside of work. The break gave me the opportunity to consider who I wanted to be in the future. It also taught me that you don’t need to be as prescriptive and planned as you may think.

Joining FSCS: a new opportunity

When the role came up at FSCS, I saw it as an excellent opportunity to draw on my financial services experience, my understanding of the regulatory landscape and my passion for helping consumers.

Now that I’m here, I really appreciate the diversity of the organisation, and the way that it allows people of all ages to contribute their different perspectives.

My dream sabbatical

I’m really happy in my role at FSCS. But If I had the chance and my personal circumstances were right, I’d spend a year travelling around the world with my family, just seeing different things and experiencing life in different ways. When I look at a map of the world, there are so many places I’d love to go.

What's Great About The FSCS?

We’re diverse in many ways

FSCS is a really inclusive employer, whether you’re looking at it from the angle of age, gender or ethnicity. Everybody who works for FSCS is valuable and we all bring something unique and different every day. Whether you’re a specialist or a generalist, whatever kind of life experience you have, you’re welcome at FSCS.

We make the most of the age spectrum

I think it’s really important in FSCS that we benefit from everybody’s skills, whether that’s someone who’s just come out of school, college or university, an apprentice, or somebody who’s worked for 30 or 40 years and is close to retirement. As I’ve got older myself, I’ve become more aware that there is some stigma in the industry against older mature talent. So at FSCS we make sure we talk about the value of mature workers and hold them up as role models.

We invest in training – for all ages

We believe it’s really important to support people in developing new skills so they can keep learning and growing. That’s true for people of all ages in the organisation. FSCS is constantly changing and the environment where we live and work is changing too, so we need to help people stay relevant. We look ahead and identify trends, then make sure that our people are equipped to deal with those changes. Providing training is also a great way to retain our talent.

“You don’t look at the age of the person, you look at what they bring. If other CEOs choose to ignore that, then they do so at their peril”

Caroline Rainbird
Chief Executive Officer, FSCS

Caroline's Career Journey

Caroline's Advice to Others

Apply to FSCS: nobody’s too old!

My advice to mature talent – and I well and truly fit into that category – is to go ahead and apply to FSCS if you like the sound of what we do. If you’re passionate about serving customers well, you’ve got just as good a chance of making it as anyone else. So don’t limit yourself because you have a perception that you’re too old. Nobody’s too old. We don’t look at age; we look at your talents, experience and skillsets.

Who we’re looking for

The kind of person who thrives at FSCS is somebody who works in collaboration, who has a curious mind, and is motivated by doing the right thing for people each and every day. We want people who are keen to keep learning. It’s important for all workers to stay relevant, whether you’re just out of school or have been working for many years. If you want to progress at FSCS, keep learning!

Advice to CEOs: don’t ignore age diversity

If other CEOs choose to ignore age diversity, they do so at their peril. By failing to recognise the importance of having older workers in your organisation, you risk losing talented individuals who really want to give their all at work each day. Older workers also open up great opportunities for you to offer mentoring and reverse mentoring in your organisation.

Netball, athletics, mentoring, reading, theatre, qualified sailing instructor.

Just a few of Caroline’s interests and side hustles