CM July and August 2018

INTERVIEW
The History Boy
Sean Feast caught up with Eddie Nott,
Intrum UK Managing Director, about the
state of the debt collection industry, the
importance of customer service, and an
embarrassing brush with celebrity.
AUTHOR – Sean Feast
EDDIE Nott has a modesty that
belies his status as the UK
Managing Director of one of the
largest debt collection agencies
in the world. “I like to think of
myself as a serial innovator,” he
explains. “And by that, I mean I am adept at
recognising and implementing other people’s
good ideas!”
It’s certainly a skill that has stood him in
good stead. A Yorkshireman born and bred and
originally from Scarborough, Eddie went to
Grammar School in Bradford, a city for which he
still has great affection: “There was a story once
that they were going to flood the city centre and
create a giant boating lake, but they obviously
thought better of it.”
HISTORY AND NUMBERS
At school he combined a love of history with
an ability with numbers to gain a place at the
London School of Economics (LSE), but not
before submitting a 75-page essay to his history
teacher on the rise of Adolf Hitler and recording
one of the highest marks ever awarded at his
school.
Eddie had visions of a career spent in dusty
archives, discovering hitherto unknown facts
about certain events or historical characters. His
headteacher, however, took a rather dim view of
his choice of literature for a school prize, opting
for an early (and much less controversial than
later editions) printing of David Irving’s treatise
on Germany’s one-time leader.
University, he tells me, was a thoroughly
enjoyable experience: “We only had four hours
of lectures and classes a week and the rest of the
time we were left to our own devices. It was all
about being given a reading list and the syllabus
and told to get on with it.”
Outside of University, Eddie spent holidays
working in Burtons, the outfitters, keeping
up a family tradition. Not only was his father
employed there, but so too his grandmother who
was in charge of the typing pool and the most
senior woman in the business.
It was at Burtons that he had his brush with
celebrity. “It was the early days of the store card,”
he explains, “and one day Elton John came into
one of our stores and put a number of items on
the card. The amount was comparatively high so
it was referred to me (Eddie was working from
an office in Leeds) and I declined it. Celebrities
then were all given false names to protect their
identities, and since I didn’t recognise it, I
refused him credit.”
Happily, Eddie’s faux pas did not do any lasting
damage, and after graduating, and declining to
join The John Lewis Partnership, he joined the
business on a permanent basis, helping to set up
a new department focused on credit risk. “In the
first week I was commuting over the Golden Gate
Bridge as we were working with Fair Isaac in
developing some of the very first credit scoring
models. As a 22-year old, I had really landed on
my feet.”
While still a student, he had got to meet Mr
Burton in person: “I’d been tasked with drawing
up a map to show all of the Burtons’ branches
when Mr Burton came around with a party of
senior executives. He asked me what I was doing
so I told him and said that I did not have enough
coloured pins to mark on my map. The next day,
Mr Burton sent some new pins around for me.”
AN IMMERSIVE CULTURE
Eddie’s habit of being in the right place at
the right time continued when Burtons was
eventually sold to GE Capital, and he became
immersed in the GE culture: “I learned so much
in a very short period of time,” he recalls. “They
were so far ahead of their time in the way that
they worked, in the collaborative approach that
they took, and in best-practice sharing. I learned
skills that we still use today.
“They were also very supportive,” he
continues. “We were looking at a number of
acquisitions at the time and they would think
nothing of jumping on a plane and coming to
help us out. It was a very positive approach.”
Recognised for his ability to get things done,
Eddie was sent out to Australia for two years as
Chief Operating Officer, but en-route became
separated from his luggage: “I thus arrived for
my first day at work in the clothes I stood up in
and spent the first hour or so being taken around
a department store by the Head of HR, a woman,
to buy me a new wardrobe. Being asked whether
I preferred briefs or boxers was a somewhat
surreal experience!”
The Recognised Standard / www.cicm.com / July/August 2018 / PAGE 24