Pictured above: Martin Igoe

Financial product distributor, Personal Touch Financial Services, has kicked off a new sales and development strategy by appointing nine regional managers to its network, in a further effort to respond to its clients' specific needs. Martin Igoe will be joining as Regional Sales Manager for the Midlands and the team will be headed up by Andy Walton, Head of Sales Development, who joined Personal Touch from Aegon in November last year.

The sales and development strategy will officially be launched in March, with its main purpose aiming to improve productivity and deliver a bespoke service to each region through a combination of sessions focussing on consumer needs, skills based development and business planning with advisers.

Carrying over 200 years of financial services and business development experience between them, the new regional team's background is varied, ranging from product providers to working for other networks and IFAs.

Dev Malle, sales and marketing director at Personal Touch Financial Services said: "We are pleased to welcome the regional managers to our growing network. In a time where marketing budgets are frozen or suffering cuts, we are pleased to show our members we are investing in them and our network's future. The Regional Managers are an essential ingredient as we deliver a unique sales development strategy for our members. We have consulted with over 100 firms nationally on our plans and the feedback has been excellent.

"Our research has also shown that IFAs and brokers resent being 'lumped' into the same region and that there was a real need to regionalise the structure, particularly in the cases of Scotland and  Northern Ireland.

"We decided to take the time to recruit our team carefully. We've invested considerable time and effort into targeted recruitment activity across the UK to attract the best talent. We are confident that our strategy will help deliver the excellence we set out to achieve".