Big Boss Interview

Andria Vidler, the CEO of Allwyn UK - the operator of the National Lottery - has warned the British public risks losing it, unless it innovates.
Allwyn took over the running of the National Lottery from Camelot in 2024, and it had pledged to double the amount if gives to good causes from 33 million pounds to 60 million pounds. But Vidler told Felicity Hannah that its future is at stake, if it doesn't continue to change and adapt at speed.
Part of this is the UK launch of Powerball, the first time the American lottery has been offered outside the United States. Unlike EuroMillions, its jackpots are uncapped and can rise into the hundreds of millions.
The interview also examines whether the National Lottery should be treated differently from other forms of gambling. Vidler rejected suggestions that draw-based games contribute significantly to gambling harm, arguing that waiting for a result removes the cycle of instant gratification associated with more addictive products. She also defended the lottery’s £500 weekly online deposit limit, saying most players spend nowhere near that amount and fewer than 2 per cent show any indication of problematic play. Allwyn has introduced over 100 new games in the last year.
Vidler has also called on the government to close a regulatory loophole which she says allows online prize draws to compete without paying lottery duty or contributing to good causes. Vidler claims that house raffles, car competitions and other online prize draws are “cloaking themselves in lottery disguise” and exploiting legislation intended for small society lotteries. “They will steal our lunch if we’re not careful,” she warned, arguing that Britain should return to a model centred on one National Lottery in order to maximise returns to good causes.
Presenter: Felicity Hannah
Producer: Olie D'Albertanson
Editor: Henry Jones
00:00 Sean and Fliss introduce the pod
03:17 Andria joins BBI, discusses 2024 takeover
06:07 The Gambling Commission investigation
10:01 Good causes target and cost of living
14:42 Problem gambling and player protection
17:23 The shift to digital
21:17 Powerball launch
22:38 Prize draw competition and the loophole
26:02 Future of National Lottery is uncertain if it doesn't innovate
32:45 Career, AI, cyber security and women in leadership

The Halifax brand is being retired after more than 180 years — and Charlie Nunn says artificial intelligence is the reason why.
The chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group told the Big Boss Interview that the way customers discover financial products has fundamentally changed. Increasingly, people are asking AI tools and large language models to find the best mortgage or savings account, making multiple banking brands less relevant in an increasingly digital world.
That shift is also reshaping the debate around bank branches. Nunn challenges one of Britain's most politically sensitive narratives, arguing that physical access to banking has never been greater once post offices, banking hubs, community bankers, ATMs and cash points are taken into account. While he acknowledges that many people feel left behind by branch closures, he says the way banking services are delivered is changing, with thousands of Lloyds colleagues now providing hour-long consultations to vulnerable customers in their own homes. Traditional branches, he believes, will survive for at least another decade, but what constitutes a "branch" is becoming increasingly blurred.
Nunn also argues that Britain has become too cautious. Regulation makes it harder and more expensive to lend than in many comparable countries, he says, while the economics of housebuilding no longer work in many parts of the country. The average first-time buyer is now 34, two-thirds take out mortgages lasting 30 years and the bank of mum and dad remains central to getting on the property ladder.
Some 13.5% of 16 to 24-year-olds are not in education, employment or training, a figure Nunn describes as "frightening" given the country's ageing population. If young people cannot build skills, save and buy homes, he warns, the long-term economic implications for Britain are significant.
Artificial intelligence, meanwhile, could transform banking over the next five years more than the previous 35, democratising access to investment advice and helping tackle fraud.
Presenter: Will Bain
Producer: Olie D'Albertanson
Editor: Henry Jones

AI and drone warfare will force a “complete reimagining” of how conflict risk is calculated and insured, the chief executive of Lloyd’s of London has warned, because traditional assumptions about how wars escalate may no longer hold.
Patrick Tiernan, who runs the 337-year-old insurance marketplace, told the Big Boss Interview that autonomous weapons and AI-driven decision-making could remove the warning signs and diplomatic pauses that have historically allowed insurers to adjust cover as conflicts intensify.
“When we talk about the way war is insured at the moment, it assumes that it’ll build up, that there’ll be breaks in there, and that you can increase the cover,” he said. “It’s very possible that won’t be the case as there is more drone warfare, more artificial intelligence in the decision-making. So we’re going to have to completely reimagine how we cover that.”
His warning comes as governments increase defence spending and NATO allies reassess their military commitments. Tiernan said Lloyd’s must ensure it has the capacity to insure growth in defence, energy and infrastructure, while being clearer about which forms of defence it supports.
He said the current risk environment is unlike anything in Lloyd’s history, with physical infrastructure, data and cyber systems, financial services and the international rules-based order all under pressure at the same time. “We are very underprepared for the risks we’re facing because we rely on things that maybe won’t be there tomorrow,” he said.
Tiernan also warned that the “protection gap” between economic losses and what is actually insured is widening. He said businesses and governments can no longer assume the state will step in when disaster strikes, arguing that high debt levels mean governments may not have the same financial firepower they had in the past.
He called on governments to spell out what they will and will not protect, so private capital can price the remaining risk. Businesses, he said, are being “wilfully ignorant” if they fail to understand their exposure.
A major state-backed cyberattack remains one of Lloyd’s realistic disaster scenarios and could be “deeply crippling” to the global economy, Tiernan said. He added that take-up of cyber insurance remains too low, particularly among European SMEs, despite policies offering prevention and resilience support as well as financial cover.
On the Strait of Hormuz, Tiernan said Lloyd’s drew on lessons from previous Gulf shipping disruption and the Black Sea closure during the Ukraine war. Insurance capacity remained available, he said, with crew safety rather than the price of cover the main factor affecting shipping.
He also argued that the insurance industry, and perhaps the wider economy, has lost some of its appetite for calculated risk since the financial crisis. Pointing to opportunities in undersea data centres, autonomous vehicles and AI-led drug development, he said: “The risk of missing out is greater than the risk of overstepping.”
On climate, Tiernan said Lloyd’s has added US flood, severe convective storm and fire to its realistic disaster scenarios, with flood, fire and drought all on an upward trajectory. He defended Lloyd’s continued insurance of legal, unsanctioned fossil fuel activity, but said the market should use its capital to support new energy technologies including small modular reactors, nuclear fusion and renewables.

Britain should stop taxing workers and start taxing robots, according to the chief executive of one of the country's biggest recruitment firms, who says the UK's tax system is pointing in entirely the wrong direction at the worst possible moment.
James Reed, CEO of Reed Recruitment, told the Big Boss Interview that the government is taxing employers who hire young people "to pick up beer glasses in gardens" whilst letting AI and automation — the technologies actively replacing those workers — go entirely untaxed. His mantra: "Back humans, tax robots." And he wants the next prime minister and chancellor to make it the centrepiece of a wholesale redesign of how Britain raises revenue.
Reed argues this is not a fringe idea but an inevitability. "Taxation follows wealth," he said. "When you see these companies being valued at over a trillion, that's where the action is. So that's where the taxation should follow." He envisions transaction-based levies on AI services and automation — "rather like VAT" — or surcharges on businesses that replace human workers with machines. He acknowledged it would "take some designing" but said the principle is simple: the robots are generating the wealth, so the robots should be taxed.
The urgency, he said, is driven by the collision of two forces. The first is the October 2024 budget, which Reed described as a "historic mistake." The £25 billion employers' National Insurance increase was, in his words, "a tax on jobs" that caused clients to cancel hiring within a week and has driven businesses towards automation and offshoring at precisely the moment AI makes both easier than ever.
The second force is AI itself. Reed warned it is "burning through entry-level jobs," destroying opportunities for young people at a pace the country is not prepared for. He said Britain is behaving like "rabbits looking into the headlights" of these changes, with no collective strategy for what happens when the jobs disappear — and with them, the income tax, employees' National Insurance and employers' National Insurance that fund public services.
Reed was unequivocal about the political response required. Asked whether there should be a new chancellor, he said: "Yes, absolutely. The incumbent made the decisions that caused the damage." He called the current period one of the toughest in his 30 years as chief executive, ranking alongside the financial crisis of 2008 and the early days of the pandemic — but worse in one respect. "In 2008 and 2020, there was a sense that we need to sort this out. I don't see that at the moment."
The consequences are already visible in the data. Vacancy numbers on reed.co.uk have been in decline for three years. National statistics show vacancies have fallen from over a million to around 700,000 — fewer than before the pandemic. But it is the graduate jobs market that tells the starkest story. Graduate vacancies on Reed's platform have collapsed from 180,000 to 50,000 in four years, and are still falling. The hardest-hit group is 21 to 25-year-olds, many of whom emerged from university with degrees that have, in Reed's words, "no currency out there in the world."
This led Reed to question the value of university itself. He said many graduates feel "mis-sold," that apprentices in their early twenties are now "way ahead" of their university-educated peers, and that the idea of half the country's young people attending university is "very outdated." Britain, he said, has been "ridiculously snobby about trades" — which he believes are the jobs of the future. He proposed a "three-lane superhighway" in which a third of school leavers go to university, a third do apprenticeships, and a third go straight into work with a short-term employer subsidy to help them get started.
Presenter: Sean Farrington
Producer: Olie D'Albertanson
Editor Henry Jones
Image Courtesy of Reed Recruitment
03:05 A real moment of opportunity and good opportunity for a reset.
04:18 The need for a new Chancellor
10:25 The need to change course on taxation around jobs
12:05 AI is burning through entry-level jobs
13:09 One of the toughest periods since 2008 (the financial crisis)
13:47 Back humans, tax robots
23:03 Is University still worth it?
35:40 Applicants being ghosted by employers
41:00 Spelling mistakes on CVs now positively sought after
44:01 Big tech companies need to pay more tax: "back humans, tax robots" pt 2

Mondelēz International, the company behind Cadbury, Oreo, Toblerone and Ritz, has warned that future European investment could bypass the UK if regulatory instability persists.
Chief executive Dirk Van de Put says the UK is the company’s second-biggest market globally and contributes more than £2.3 billion to the economy each year, supporting 12,000 jobs and spending £1.3 billion with more than 1,000 UK suppliers. But he is sharply critical of food and drink being left out of the government’s industrial strategy, despite representing around a quarter of industrial turnover. He says the sector is being taken for granted and warns that repeated policy shifts have already cost Mondelēz £40 million in reformulation work that was then superseded by further changes. Asked whether future investment could go elsewhere in Europe because of government policy, he says: “Yes, of course.”
Van de Put also defends Mondelēz’s decision to continue operating in Russia, despite acknowledging the company pays taxes there that contribute to the war in Ukraine. He argues that withdrawal would have put 3,000 employees out of work, left 10,000 farmers without a buyer, and likely handed confiscated plants to Kremlin-linked interests that could generate even more money for the Russian state. He says: “I’m not pleased about that,” but maintains that staying was “not the most popular decision” but “the right decision”.
The conflict in Ukraine is not theoretical for Mondelēz. Van de Put reveals that the company’s office building in Ukraine was hit on the morning of the interview, and its factories have been struck and rebuilt twice at a cost of tens of millions. He also said staff were evacuated to neighbouring countries during the worst of the fighting.
More broadly, he describes the past two years as the toughest of his 30-year career. Wars, inflation, oil prices, packaging costs, fertiliser markets and weak household budgets have created cascading pressure across the business. He says global consumer confidence is among the worst he has ever seen.
The cocoa supply chain has also suffered its worst disruption in at least 40 years. Concentrated production in Ghana and Ivory Coast, endemic crop disease and back-to-back extreme weather events drove an 18 per cent fall in harvests and sent prices soaring. Two stronger crops have eased the immediate pressure, but Van de Put says the structural fragility remains and the sector needs long-term intervention from governments, companies and farming communities.
He also pushes back against the backlash against processed food, saying: “The world cannot live without processed foods.” He argues that processing is essential to food preservation and global food security, though he accepts the industry must continue to make products healthier.
On GLP-1 weight loss drugs, Van de Put says Mondelēz is not yet seeing a material impact, but expects the trend to reshape consumer habits over time. He sees the drugs as broadly positive and says the company is adapting through acquisitions in protein and health snacking, including Grenade, Clif Bar and Perfect Snacks, as well as developing products with more protein, fibre and cleaner ingredients.
Presenter: Leanna Byrne
Producer: Olie D’Albertanson
Editor: Henry Jones
0:00 Will and Leanna intro the podcast
03:01 Dirk Van de Put interview begins / His background as a vet
08:53 Forces shaping the business: wars, tariffs, climate, cocoa, regulation, GLP-1 drugs
13:25 Europe as a difficult market / Consumer confidence at historic lows16:28 Continuing operations in Russia / Moral decisions & taxes funding the war
21:51 Cocoa supply chain crisis, El Niño & prices
24:27 Consumer pricing, shrinkflation & recipe integrity
29:30 UK industrial strategy: food industry left out
33:00 Future investment in UK & HFSS regulation
36:07 Education vs. regulation on obesity & weight loss drugs
41:48 Acquisitions (Grenade, Clif Bar) & protein/fibre trends
43:50 Chocolate tasters & "tasting Neanderthal" confession