Jeremy Bond obituary

My brother Jeremy Bond, who has died aged 80, was one of the pioneers of the concept of marketing in the financial sector. He first pursued the idea in the early 1960s while working at Provident Mutual Life Assurance in the City, and later formed his own dedicated financial marketing consultancy, Moorgate Marketing, which expanded globally and was listed on the Stock Exchange in the early 80s.

When a hostile takeover bid led the company into financial difficulties in 1990, it had to be liquidated, leaving Jeremy owing a huge sum, as he had taken out personal loans to try to keep the business afloat. However, with typical savvy, bravery and commitment, he urged his creditors to allow him time to pay, set up a new, smaller financial marketing business, FMC, and began to rebuild financial security. After 20 years he had paid back every penny of debt.

Jeremy was born in Norwich to Raymond Bond, who worked for Barclays Bank, and his wife, Moyra (nee Bell), a headteacher and bestselling author of educational books. Our parents separated in 1946 and Moyra took us to live in Swanage in Dorset.

Never a natural scholar, Jeremy found the restrictive school discipline of the 1940s and 50s did not suit his restless temperament, and he left Poole grammar with just three O levels. After a stint in the research department at Cadbury’s in Moreton in Merseyside, he moved to London to work in the City. It was while he was at Provident Mutual that he he met and fell in love with Viktoria Lengyel-Rheinfuss, a Hungarian who had escaped from Budapest during the uprising of 1956. They married in 1967, while Jeremy was still at Provident Mutual.

Prior to Jeremy’s arrival at there, financial services companies had hardly thought about actively marketing their products. But Jeremy realised that pensions and insurance policies needed selling just the same as any other product, and he also suggested that he could create new products and packages to entice new customers to the company. Afterwards he went to work for two other companies who asked him to set up internal marketing teams for them during the 70s, and having done this he decided that rather than work for other people he should set up his own consultancy, and Moorgate Marketing was born.

After Moorgate’s collapse, and having made FMC a success, in 1996 he took the decision, with his business partner, to reduce his commitments by splitting the company into two and running one half of it, FMC International, until his retirement in 2013.

That year he was able to become the founder and principal donor of the Park theatre in North London. His interest in that venture stemmed from his great love of the theatre, which extended to writing plays – one of which, The Cause, was staged at the Jermyn Street theatre in London in 2016. In his spare time Jeremy was also a passionate reader, history buff and traveller.

He is survived by Viktoria and their three children, Jez, Imola and Nicola, six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.