Early career

Garner was a graduate trainee at Procter & Gamble (P&G) in 1991. He spent nine years at P&G including five years in Romania, then worked at their European headquarters in Brussels. He joined Dixons in 2001, initially as Marketing Director at mobile phone retailer The Link. In 2003 he played a key role in launching Immobilise www.immobilise.com which had the objective of reducing mobile phone theft by stopping the ability to re-programme stolen phones.^[4]

HSBC

Following his stint at P&G and a short stay at Dixons, Garner joined HSBC in 2004. He was appointed Head of UK Retail Bank on 1 December 2010 as Group General Manager and deputy head of HSBC UK, replacing Paul Thurston. He is credited with putting in place the firms approach to Treating Customers Fairly.^[5] He left at the end of October 2012.^[6] Brian Robertson was Head of HSBC Group's (combined) UK operations at the time.

BT

Garner became chief executive of BT's infrastructure division Openreach in February 2014.^[7] During his tenure superfast broadband coverage exceeded 90%.^[8] He left the company in April 2016 to become chief executive of Nationwide Building Society.

Nationwide

His role at Nationwide started on 5 April 2016, with former CEO Graham Beale stepping down on 4 April 2016. In addition to his £885,000 salary, Garner also receives a £292,000 pension allowance, a £1 million bonus and £500 a day to cover the cost of travel, security and medical expenses.^[9] In April 2020, Garner was one of the first CEOs in the financial services sector to take a salary reduction and forfeit his bonus in light of the coronavirus crisis.^[10] In March 2021 Nationwide said that its 13,000 staff could work anywhere, with Garner describing the move as "putting employees in control of where they work from".^[11] On 23 September 2021, Nationwide announced that Garner had asked the Board of the Society to start the process of finding his successor as part of an orderly transition.^[12] At Nationwide’s half-year results in November 2021, the Society stated that its profits had more than doubled versus the same period last year to £853million.” ^[13]

In May 2022 the Society announced its best ever financial results since it was founded in 1884 when it recorded a profit of £1.6bn for its financial year 2021/2022. In attributing the financial performance of the Society Garner said, “We have stuck to our knitting and have focused on doing it well. The key point is that all of our profit is retained and gives my successor options”. Garner was succeeded on 2 June as CEO by Debbie Crosbie, formerly CEO of TSB.^[14]

Industry roles

Garner sat on the board of UK Finance,^[15] the trade association for the finance industry, and sat on the Practitioner Panel of the Financial Services Authority having previously been its Chair from 2011 to 2013.^[16] He was also a non-executive director of the Financial Ombudsman Service from 2008 to 2010.

On 10 July 2023 in his Mansion House speech, Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that Joe Garner would Chair an independent review on the Future of Payments with the objective of considering how payments are likely to be made in the future and to make recommendations on the steps needed to successfully deliver world leading retail payments. ^{[17] [18]}

Other roles

On 5 Feb 2024 Garner was appointed by the Cabinet Office to the committee responsible for recommending proposals for a permanent memorial and legacy programme to remember Queen Elizabeth II.^[19]