The venue once again looked fantastic with coloured zones to guide advisers around the show, and with a brilliant range of exhibitors and seminar speakers it was a fab couple of days. A huge well done to the Front Events team who were seen running around frantically from 8am until well after the show finished! As media partners of the show, Financial Reporter put together the seminar programme and we were thrilled that it ran so smoothly and was well-received by the delegates.
This year I was not alone in my pen hunting - we brought new recruit to the Financial Reporter team, Rozi, to Expo with us and she was more than happy to join in the search for the financial services industry's best pen. We spoke to almost everybody in the show as we swiped pens left right and centre (and picking up the rest of the goodies on the way - but more on that in a bit!).
We know exhibitors take the Financial Reporter Post-Expo Pen Competition VERY seriously and so we spent lots of time this morning carefully discussing colours, shape, grip, nib type and smoothness of use before settling on our top three. It's obvious people are taking our pen competition to heart as the standard of pens was excellent this year and it took several disagreements and re-testing to eventually decide on a winner.
The winner of the 2014 Financial Reporter Post-Expo Pen Competition is.... Shawbrook Bank!
With the darkest black ink of all the pens, a smooth write and a bonus highlighter on the top of the pen, it is a deserving winner. However we would like to put Masthaven Finance and SimplyBiz in second and third place as their pens were both excellent too - plus a special mention to Blacks Connect for being the only company to give away gel pens.
Extra categories are required, we feel, and we think that we should start judging the Friendliest Stand, Best Freebies and Most Hungover On The Second Day of Expo categories - let us know which categories you think we should judge next time!
Below: our rigorous pen testing procedure plus our winners
