CISI CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER TRACY VEGRO OBE SPEAKS TO LEN WILLIAMS ABOUT HER CAREER TO DATE AND HER AMBITIONS FOR THE ORGANISATION
Are we ready to step up?
T
racy Vegro doesn’t mince her words. Speaking about the challenges that the global economy and the financial services sector are facing, she
lists some critical issues, including the climate crisis, the war in Ukraine, rising inflation, energy shortages, and floods. Tracy says that “it’s going to be a very difficult ecosystem” for the sector to navigate. Nevertheless, she also spies an opportunity for the sector: “Good investment advice and boosting financial literacy are at an absolute premium now. So, are we ready to step up?”
From politics to regulation Tracy has worked on the “same core issues, which are generally public policy programmes and legislation to stimulate economic growth”, throughout her career. She grew up in the north of England in Yorkshire and after university joined the UK Civil Service as a graduate in the then Department for Trade and Industry (see CV boxout). Her time in Whitehall saw her do a
range of jobs, covering company law, financial services, regional policy, skills and enterprise, and after progressing to the Senior Civil Service in the Department for Business, included stints in the Government Equality Unit and later in the then Department of Energy and Climate Change. She was also seconded to spend time working at the
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Co-operative Bank, after headline- grabbing lapses heralded a recapitalisation programme and review of governance under the late Lord Myners, which exposed her to a commercial environment. Tracy worked under numerous
ministers and different complexions of government: including Conservative-led, Labour-led, and also the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government of the early 2010s. “As a civil servant, you have to be neutral; you’re not allowed to be in any way partisan,” she says. The variety these roles offer “keeps you motivated and teaches you to focus on analysing data and making changes because you have to keep looking at issues afresh and from the perspective of value for money for the taxpayer. One day it is one minister in charge, then post an election, there may be another with completely different opinions coming in”. This experience also taught her the
importance of basing decisions on evidence when devising and implementing government policy, and she has taken this approach with her everywhere she has worked. “Because if you’re spending a huge amount of taxpayers’ money, members’ money, shareholders’ money, potentially an investor’s money, you have to know that you’ve analysed the pros and the cons of something.” In 2016, Tracy moved from the Civil
Service to work at regulatory authorities. She spent four years at the Financial
>> THE REVIEW MARCH 2023
PHOTOGRAPHY: CHARLIE SURBEY
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