the times | Saturday June 11 2022 55The ManifestoBusiness
Q&A
Who is your mentor?
I have learnt through so
many different people
throughout both my
personal and
professional life and will
continue to do so
Does money motivate
you?
I have always been
committed to creating a
comfortable life for
myself and my family.
However, working in the
bereavement sector
provides very
meaningful motivations
over and above
financial reward
Which person do you
most admire?
My colleagues who
work on the front line of
the bereavement sector.
They do incredibly
special work in what
can be very challenging
circumstances. I’ll
always remember my
first experience of a
colleague, Ian,supporting a grieving
family and I can recall
knowing at that point
that I’d found my place
What was the most
important event in
your working life?
Leading a business
through incredibly
challenging and
uncertain times during
the pandemic. The
volatile and uncertain
nature of the changing
rules and regulations
and the clear impact of
the pandemic on
colleagues meant that
strong, supportive and
decisive leadership was
necessary. I learnt a lot
about myself
What does leadership
mean to you?
Creating and nurturing
a positive work
environment where
people can be at their
very best, in whatever
function they perform
What is your favourite
television programme?
I very rarely watch TV.
However, I do love a
good Friends (pictured
right) marathon and stillpride myself on being
able to recite most of it
How do you relax?
Walking my two
Bedlington terriers
around the local
country park, ideally
early in the morning at
its most peacefulCV
Age: 37
Education: 2003-06:
University of
Wolverhampton, law;
2012-15: Stratford
Business School,
cemetery and
crematorium
management; 2017-19:
University of Warwick,
MBA.
Career: 2008-10:
Dudley metropolitan
borough council; 2010-
20: Dignity; 2020-21:
Westerleigh Group,
commercial and
operations director;
2021-present: Dignity,
chief operating officer,
then chief executivethe FCA, is trying to lead the industry
response and to limit the pain for
those customers, as well as the
damage to the reputation of the rest
of the market. It has committed to
support Safe Hands’ customers for the
next six months, ensuring that any
who pass away in that time receive a
funeral without an extra charge.
Dignity is also at the “very early
stages” of a review, likely to last a
couple of months, into whether it can
go further. However, given that Safe
Hands’ trust is “heavily under water”,
Dignity will not be able to plug the
financial hole on its own, meaning
that a large number of Safe Hands’
customers face having to pay more if
their funeral plan is transferred to an
authorised company, such as Dignity.
While still to identify what the best
answer may be, Davidson wants to
“find a compromise that limits
customer harm and provides a
solution for those families”. Some
MPs have raised the prospect of a
state bailout of customers, but the
Dignity boss is focused on an
“industry solution” and argues that
Safe Hands shows why regulation,
which Dignity has long pushed for, is
“absolutely essential”. The FCA’s
regulation from July 29 includes a
ban on cold-calling and commission
payments to intermediaries, while
consumers will be able to complain to
the Financial Ombudsman Service
and plans will be protected by the
Financial Services Compensation
Scheme.
Dignity has not been beyond
reproach, though. When Phoenix was
seeking to oust Whiley last spring,
Channon had alerted other
shareholders to “some very serious
issues” in Dignity’s pre-paid funeral
plan business. Details were not
disclosed at the time, with Phoenix
citing a confidentiality agreement
with Dignity, and Davidson is
similarly reluctant to divulge details.
However, she acknowledges that
some issues related to the conduct of
unnamed, third-party telephony
partners and a lack of information
provided to customers. The conduct
was “halted immediately as soon as
that was identified” and Dignity
removed its partners “shortly
before I returned back to
the business”.
Dignity is planning
to launch a new
pre-paid product
in July, which she
hopes will
“transform” the
market.
Transitioning from
selling plans via
third parties to
branches is expected to
lead to lower sales in the
first half of this year, while
the “distorting impact” of the
pandemic on the death rate is also set
to weaken profits.
Nevertheless, Dignity is optimistic
that profits will begin to recover from
this and the price cuts, as well as
benefiting from 12 regions replacing a
“management hierarchy” with a
“locally empowered” leadership
structure and increased spending in
its estate and fleet of vehicles. For
Davidson, who so clearly remembers
starting out locally in Dudley, its
strategy of “understanding local
needs and local communities” will
revive morale and Dignity.O
n her first day covering
the maternity leave of a
bereavement services
administrator at Dudley
council, Kate Davidson
decided to give up pursuing a law
career and to work in the funerals
industry instead. It was 2010, about
four years after graduating from the
University of Wolverhampton, and
Davidson was observing a council
colleague supporting an “incredibly
upset” family distressed to find that
the teddy bears they had placed on
the grave of their dead baby had gone
missing. “It was an interesting
experience for somebody who was
brand new into the sector, but it was
absolutely instrumental in making me
realise what a special place this is to
work in.”
Twelve years later and now aged 37,
Davidson was formally appointed
yesterday as chief executive of
Dignity, the industry’s largest player
alongside Co-op Funeralcare and the
only listed operator, after its annual
shareholder meeting in Birmingham
on Thursday.
Her rise to the top is significant not
only for its speed, but also for Dignity
— a company owning 776 funeral
sites, operating 46 crematoria and
employing about 4,000 people — and
the wider industry. The latter has
generated unwelcome headlines and
debates in Westminster over the
collapse of Safe Hands Plans, a pre-
paid funerals company, on the eve of
regulation from the Financial
Conduct Authority, which has left
tens of thousands of customers with
underfunded funerals and an
estimated £60 million hole.
Meanwhile, the Sutton Coldfield-
based Dignity is seeking to recover
from setbacks of its own. Stricter
regulation, concerns about a lack of
price transparency, a shareholder
coup and subsequent clearout of its
board, combined with the pandemic
and a volatile death rate, have hit
both its profits and share price. Those
shares, which struck a low of 216p in
May 2020 as the pandemic shook the
industry, remain down more than
80 per cent from a high of almost
£29 in 2016, valuing the company at
about £240 million.
Davidson is focused on a
turnaround strategy, outlined to
shareholders at Thursday’s annual
meeting, built on the recent
introduction of “substantially” lower
prices to increase the number of
funerals. Gary Channon, the founder
of Phoenix Asset Management,
Dignity’s largest shareholder, had
concluded that high prices and
market share losses were “leading to
likely failure”. Channon, 54, stepped
down as chief executive of Dignity on
Thursday, just over a year after he
had seized control of the board by
ousting Clive Whiley, 61, Dignity’s
executive chairman at that time.
Davidson’s promotion from chief
operating officer of Dignity was
announced in May, just under a year
after returning to the company shehad first joined from Dudley council
in 2010. Her appointment ended a
two-year search for a permanent
replacement for Mike McCollum, 55,
Dignity’s former chief executive.
Channon had kept in touch with
Davidson during her brief time as
commercial and operations director
at Westerleigh Group, a rivalKate Davidson was formally appointed chief executive of Dignity yesterday after spending 12 years working in the sectorDavidson takes first step in building
dignity within the funerals business
The new boss of the
only listed company in
the sector has several
challenges facing her,
reports Alex Ralph
ANDREW FOX FOR THE TIMEScrematorium and cemetery operator
that she joined in February 2020,
shortly before Covid-19 fully took
hold. “Within weeks of joining
[Westerleigh], we were into full crisis
management response to the
changing regulations, the changing
health and safety requirements and
trying to support our colleagues whowere doing really challenging work in
extremely challenging circumstances
in the pandemic.” For Davidson, “it
was an amazing and quite
transformational experience in terms
of my own leadership skills”.
Handling the quickly changing
rules, the restrictions on attendees at
funerals and the “very difficult”
conversations with frustrated
customers and funeral directors was
among the biggest challenges. One
“incredibly sad” memory of a funeral
at a crematorium in Bristol stuck in
her mind. “I remember walking
around the grounds that sunny
lunchtime and I was just having a
bit of a breather and observed
a hearse coming in and a
limousine and there was
three people walking
behind the coffin.
“I don’t know who
those people were,
what their
circumstances were,
but I just remember
them kind-of holding
each other’s hands. And
for me that really
resonated because I just
thought this may not have been
the funeral or send-off that they want
to give to their loved one, and that’s
incredibly sad.
“It became even more notable for
the rest of the country and the rest of
the world when the Queen had to
face exactly that challenge [at the
funeral of Prince Philip], and for the
sector it was quite iconic when we
saw that.”
With restrictions on funerals
having eased, the industry is now
grappling with an outcry from Safe
Hands’ customers and MPs over the
failure of the company and what led
to it. Dignity, in close dialogue withbeforeIr
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