Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United Kingdom based Advisor operating in the FinTech space. If you think a Advisor is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Jon Kamaluddin
Venture Advisor of Felix Capital
Jon Kamaluddin was international director at online retailer ASOS from 2009 to 2013 after having spent five years as CFO. In his role as international director, Kamaluddin led ASOS global expansion, including the U.S., Russia, China, Germany, and Australia, which helped ASOS grow its overseas sales to almost 60 percent of its overall sales. He also served as a member of ASOS Board of Directors.
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About : Felix Capital is a venture fund that focuses on digital commerce, digital media, and information technology companies.
Lord Rumi Verjee
Investor/Advisor of ComplyAdvantage
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About : ComplyAdvantage provides AI-driven financial crime risk data and detection technology.
Caroline Worboys
Investor/Advisor of ComplyAdvantage
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About Outra: ComplyAdvantage provides AI-driven financial crime risk data and detection technology.
Stanislas Lecat
Investor/Advisor of ComplyAdvantage
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About : ComplyAdvantage provides AI-driven financial crime risk data and detection technology.
Michael Reynolds
Investor/Advisor of ComplyAdvantage
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About : ComplyAdvantage provides AI-driven financial crime risk data and detection technology.
Larry Sullivan
Investor/Advisor of ComplyAdvantage
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About : ComplyAdvantage provides AI-driven financial crime risk data and detection technology.
Rob Devey
Advisor of Bought By Many
Rob joined Octopus as an independent non-executive director in October 2013. Prior to this Rob was the CEO of Prudential UK and Europe, where he was responsible for developing the company’s business in the UK and Europe as it continued to meet the savings and retirement needs of its millions of customers. Rob has over 15 years’ experience in financial services. Prior to joining Prudential in 2009, he worked at Lloyds Banking Group across a number of senior management roles and was a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group in both Europe and the US.
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About : Bought By Many is a pet InsurTech company that provides insurance products and a streamlined customer experience.
Pascal De Mul
Advisor of Lumia Capital
Pascal de Mul joined Exit Live as Chief Executive Officer in 2020.
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About Exit Live, Tribe of Noise, Tribe of Noise: Expansion-stage VC firm partnering with forward-thinking US and European innovators expanding internationally for breakout growth.
Justin Cooke
Advisor of Northzone
I am the Vice Chair of Unicef UK, a Venture Partner at tech VC Northzone, Chairman of The Drum, Deputy Chair of social learning platform FutureLearn and a Non-Executive Director, adviser and investor in numerous fast-growing technology businesses and sit on the British Museum Digital Advisory Board. Prior to Northzone I was the CEO and Founder of POSSIBLE UK, WPP Digital’s largest global agency. I am also the former Chair and now an Ambassador of the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA), the industry body for everyone working in digital Britain. I discovered digital media while studying Quasi-Theatrical Leisure and Computers as Theatre while studying Drama at the University of Manchester. After graduating with honours I worked for the BBC, Universal Music and United News and Media before Co-founding global digital agency Fortune Cookie in 1997. I secured venture capital funding and grew the business across three continents before exiting to WPP in 2012. For two years I served on the Board of EPiServer – the world’s fastest growing content management and community platform until its sale to investment bank, IK Partners. I also served on the board of ActiveStandards until its merger with CrownPeak and raising of $50 Million from venture capital firm K1 to become the world’s leading cloud-based digital experience management company. I have been lucky enough to have been listed in the Wired Top 100; rated the UK’s second most influential person in digital by Econsultancy; inducted into the British Digital Hall of Fame and most recently, Business Insider ranked me as one of the UK’s coolest tech VC’s.
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About : Northzone is an early-stage venture capital fund built on experience spanning multiple economic and disruptive technology cycles.
Lord Francis Maude
Advisory Board Member of OakNorth
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About : OakNorth is the creator of the ON Credit Intelligence Suite – proven cloud software that transforms commercial lending
Lord Adair Turner
Independent Advisor of OakNorth
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About : OakNorth is the creator of the ON Credit Intelligence Suite – proven cloud software that transforms commercial lending
Greg Reeve
Advisory Board Member of Growth Street
Greg is the CEO for TranssNet Payments, a new entrant into the African Payments scene, backed by Transsion Holdings, Mediatek and NetEase. TranssNet is introducing a full suite of financial services, accessed directly from and embedded in the handset, providing an out of the box experience. Transsion Holdings are the manufacturers of Tecno, Itel and Infinix mobile Phones. In the African Business most admired Brands in Africa 2018 they were ranked 7, 16 & 28 – three brands in the top thirty! NetEase is valued at $43Bn and is China’s largest games company.
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About PalmPay: Growth Street is fast, flexible overdrafts for growing businesses.
Tom Brammar
Advisor of Stocktwits
Tom Brammar is Advisor at StockTwits.
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About Stackin’: Stocktwits is a real-time financial communications platform for the financial and investing community.
Robert Howes
CTO & Board Advisor of Judopay
Rob co-founded Algomi to build on a strong technology background engineering sophisticated solutions to complex problems. Drawn to opportunities where technology can be used to challenge the status quo, Rob has spent many years successfully leading the delivery of ambitious Fixed Income solutions, including Credit List Trading at UBS and more recently a first of its kind anonymous crossing platform for bonds. Rob holds a M. Eng. in Information Systems Engineering from Imperial College.
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About Judopay, Judopay: Judopay is a mobile-first payments platform.
Claire Bridel
Board of Advisors of Kantox
Kantox’s goal is to create a transparent and fair market place for FX transactions, bringing unprecedented value to its clients. I am very excited at the prospect of helping this young, professional and passionate team to grow their business.
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About : Kantox is a leader in Currency Management Automation software that enables businesses to automate their end-to-end FX workflow
Annette Wilson
Advisor of Finch Capital
Annette is a Partner. She Joined Orange Growth Capital (now Finch Capital) in 2016, Prior to that she was the founding CFO of Palamon Capital Partners, a European growth investor, and latterly led its Investor Relations and PR activities, taking its funds under management to €1.3 billion. Most recently she was Head of Investor Relations and Public Relations at Silverfleet Capital Partners, an established mid-market buyout investor, which raised Silverfleet II, a €870 million fund. She is also an active participant in the private equity community and served on the BVCA Board. She is currently a member of the BVCA Investor Relations Advisory Group and a member of the Invest Europe Working Group on Accounting Standards, Valuation and Reporting. Prior to joining the private equity industry, Annette worked in the insurance industry at Sedgwick plc, a LSE listed company in various financial roles in the UK, USA and Europe and thereafter was CFO of Windsor PLC, LSE listed company. She started her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Annette holds a B.Com (Hons) from the University of Johannesburg and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
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About : Finch Capital is a series A/B investor in high-growth financial technologies companies run by exceptional entrepreneurs with EUR 2-5m in ARR
Stephanie Allen
Member of the Board of Advisors of CityFalcon
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About CityFalcon, Millennium Management: A Big Data and AI approach to financial content with news, analytics, and insights on 250k+ topics from 3000+ sources
Sir Alan Collins
Board Advisor of Ensygnia
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About : Ensygnia delivers integration Platform as a Service for large payment companies and corporations deploying omnichannel solutions
Mike Ullmann
Advisor of Prodigy Finance
Michael Ullmann has been involved in more than 40 different entrepreneurial businesses in various capacities; always as a shareholder. His main focus has been on turnarounds in the bakery business and engineering. He has served as chairman of the board for more than a dozen companies. He is currently chairman of Prodigy, an educational debt provider and an investor in H2O, a business in water management and Black Mountain Insulation, a company providing environmentally friendly house insulation; the first two have INSEAD CEO’s and the third has been primary financed via an INSEAD network. Michael was an affiliate professor in entrepreneurship at INSEAD from 1987-2005 where he helped the Entrepreneurship Department develop into one of the most vital and popular departments in the school. Michael has backed many of his former students in their own business ventures and continues to be a mentor to several companies. He has written many cases and articles on Entrepreneurship. He has an MA from St Catherine’s College, Oxford and an MBA from INSEAD. He has been a fellow of St Catherine’s since 2004. Apart from his main hobby and passion, business, Michael enjoys games of skill and chance, along with outdoor pursuits such as shooting, sailing, skiing and golf.
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About : Prodigy Finance provides postgraduate student loans to international students to attend a top school.
Jean-Michel Paul
Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Advisor of AkinovA
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About AkinovA: AkinovA: an electronic marketplace for the transfer and trading of (re)insurance risks.
Greg Hawkins
Senior Technical Advisor of Starling Bank
Greg is Chief Technology Officer at Starling Bank, leading on technical strategy, engineering and infrastructure, and operating a service-based architecture in AWS supporting native iOS and Android apps. Greg has loved programming from the era of ZX Spectrums and BBC Micros, writing and submitting BASIC programs to computer magazines while at school in the 80s. He wants bank-building to be fast, fun and fearless. He codes in many languages but he loves Clojure.
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About : Starling Bank is a mobile banking platform that offers personal, joint, and business accounts.
Marco Taricco
Advisory Board Member of Satispay
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About : Satispay is a fintech company that provides a bank account enabled mobile payment platform.
Nick Bliss
Senior Advisor of Oxford Capital Partners
Nick is a senior adviser to our Infrastructure investment team. Until May 2016 Nick was a senior partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. He worked at Freshfields for more than 30 years, including 21 years as a partner. Throughout his partnership he was heavily involved in infrastructure markets in the UK, across the EU and further afield, including the Middle East, Asia and North America. He is a well-known figure in the infrastructure market having acted for governments, developers, infrastructure funds and direct investors, banks, arrangers and export credit agencies. He made his name as an innovator in the early days of PFI and has subsequently been involved in the development and globalisation of the PPP and other infrastructure models. By background a project financier, since the rise of infrastructure as a recognised investment class in the early 2000s, Nick has used his understanding of the market and its project structures to facilitate the entry of institutional and other investors into the regulated and unregulated infrastructure and utility markets. Nick is the executive chairmanship of a company owned by three infrastructure funds which holds the concession to build and maintain major developments to two teaching hospitals. He is a trustee of The London School of Architecture, a new architectural school offering an alternative postgraduate route into the profession. Nick is a graduate of Corpus Christi College Cambridge where he read Law.
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About Chatham Partners, Oxford Capital Partners: Oxford Capital is a technology venture capital investor based in London and Oxford.
Julian J. Kaljuvee
Advisor of EstateGuru
Founder at EstateGuru.
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About : EstateGuru is a marketplace facilitating property-backed loans for SMEs and carefully selected investment opportunities.
Nigel Payne
Non-Executive Director Advisor Channel of rebuildingsociety.com
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About rebuildingsociety.com: peer to business loans platform connecting lenders directly with businesses needing debt funding.
Clive Sykes
Senior Advisor of Second Estates
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About : Bringing alternative finance to the fast growing short term rental sector.
Jean-Stephane Gourevitch
Advisor of Mespo
Jean-Stéphane Gourévitch has over twenty years’ International, European and UK senior management experience in the Digital and Mobile Communications ecosystem in particular in key Regulatory, Public Policy/Affairs and Strategy fields. He has specialized and is currently advising clients on the strategic, business, regulatory and policy risks and opportunities resulting from the emerging Digital and Mobile Convergence Ecosystem such as Mobile Money, Mobile Payments, Mobile Wallets but also m-Health, m-Education, m-Content, Machine-to-Machine Communications and Smart connected living (Smart Buildings, Smart Cars, Smart Cities). He has held senior management positions with a number of blue-chip International telecoms and media businesses such as Everything Everywhere Ltd. (EE), Orange, Global Crossing, France Telecom, Verizon Business, Colt Technology Services Ltd, leading and advising on strategic, operational, policy/regulatory, compliance and lobbying issues in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia. He has worked for OFCOM, the UK digital communications regulator, focusing on strategic and policy work on spectrum and mobile technologies issues. He has also held senior management positions with Deloitte Consulting and with strategic marketing and PR/Communications firms. He has two main functional expertise pillars: First pillar: European and International Affairs; Public Affairs; Regulatory Strategy, Public Policy; Compliance; Competition Policy; Government Relations. – Second pillar: Corporate Strategy/Planning; Competitive; Market & Policy Intelligence; Issue management; Crisis Management and Communications; Stakeholders Relationships Management.
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About : Mespo is an independent platform that manages money across all of the accounts.
Mark Falcon
Advisor of Mespo
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About : Mespo is an independent platform that manages money across all of the accounts.
James Ashe-Taylor
Advisor of Mespo
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About : Mespo is an independent platform that manages money across all of the accounts.
Richard Dallas
Advisor of Mespo
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About : Mespo is an independent platform that manages money across all of the accounts.
Simon Yun-Farmbrough
Member of Advisory Board of Creamfinance
Simon has a proven track record of envisioning, leading and delivering growth initiatives in a number of financial companies. In addition to leading the IPO of Egg, the first digital bank in United Kingdom, Simon has more than 20 years of consultancy experience within financial services. He is also a member of the Investment Committee of the world’s oldest scientific society, The Royal Society. Simon joined the Advisory Board of Creamfinance to facilitate the growth of the company.
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About : Creamfinance is a financial services company based on cutting edge financial technology instruments.
James Alexander
Advisory Board Member of LANDBAY
James has been one of the main revolutionaries of British financial services over the past decade. He radically transformed the notion of financial intermediation as co-founder and UK CEO of Zopa, the world’s first peer-to-peer lending platform. Prior to that, he was Strategy Director of Egg, the groundbreaking online bank, where he launched the company’s digital TV and mobile services and the UK’s first and most successful account aggregation service. James is currently a Partner of The Foundation, a leading growth and innovation consultancy, where he has worked with clients including M&S, O2, Just Giving, Barclaycard, Tesco, Eurostar, The Guardian, Save the Children, A&n Media, Friends Life, Old Mutual and HSBC. He is also a Trustee for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), a Trustee and former CEO of Green Thing and a Chair of GEN Community, an industrial provident society that delivers low carbon investments as well as social impact.
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About : Landbay is a specialist Buy to Let mortgage lender using peer-to-peer technology to fund its loans.
Amit Kahana
Advisor of Finiata
Amit Kahana is a Chief Risk Officer with over 10 years of experience in SME lending, within Risk and Product Management. Amit has worked in Fintechs across the UK, US, Israel and Europe.
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About Finiata: Finiata provides working capital financing for freelancers and SME’s over a fully automated data driven scoring technology.
Keith Saxton
Advisor of ForwardLane
Keith Saxton Independent Director and Advisor An experienced executive leader Keith has a deep understanding of the Financial Services industry, and the role that technology plays in developing and executing business strategy. He is an expert in how business risk can be changed and managed by technology, and understands the risk of technology – a combination providing a unique perspective and executive capability.
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About : ForwardLane is the essential insights platform used by financial professionals for personalized conversations
Agostino RUSSO
Technology Advisor of FXCH Ltd.
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About : Blockchain-based Spot-FX Institutional Clearing House
Iain Blackwood
Advisor of RemitRadar
35 years of international consumer retailing and financial services experience as a Director of Thomas Cook Remittance background as CEO MoneyGram International 1993-2003 Extensive leadership experience in the consumer, global payments and tech sector
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About : RemitRadar services the needs of an emerging global community of 2.5bn people dependant on remittance services.
Yann Gindre
Deputy Chairman and Head of Advisory board of Akoni Hub
Advisory Board Member, bringing international finance and diverse experience servicing corporate banking clients. Senior executive with global experience In Corporate Investment Banking, Hedge Funds with a front to back experience. Previous roles from 2004 to late 2012, include CEO Natixis, The Americas & CEO Natixis UK, Chairman of the New York and London Executive committees, Chairman of Natixis Alternative assets. Yann has been a financial consultant and a Director at UNPRI until 2015. Between 1988 and 2004 he was MD Global Head of DCM at JP Morgan Chase, UBS and Barclays Capital and Global Head of Markets at Commerzbank. Yann Gindre holds an MBA from London Business School.
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About Akoni Hub: Akoni provides simple cash management tools for individuals and SMEs.
Mike Payne
Member of Advisory Board of Infinity Circle
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About Infinity Circle: Infinity Circle is a digital wealth creation fintech platform.
Christian Papathanasiou
Advisor of Credits
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About Credits: Blockchain Platform-As-A-Service
Arie Levy
Advisor of Credits
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About Credits: Blockchain Platform-As-A-Service
Luis Carranza
Senior Advisor of Fintech Worldwide
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About : The World’s Leading Network for Fintech, Blockchain & Digital Impact.
Philip Smith
Advisor of Nivaura
Philip advises both lead managers and issuers on international debt capital markets transactions across a wide range of issuer types (bank, corporate, sovereign, utilities, transport), regions and industry sectors and his practice covers straight debt (Regulation S and Rule 144A stand-alone issues, Private Placements, LPNs, MTN programmes, CP and CDs), covered bonds and structured products. His practice includes investment grade and non-investment grade issues in the public and the private markets, combining work in the mature markets with a focus on emerging market transactions with deals recently completed for issuers and sovereigns in Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and the Slovak Republic and in the CEE and the CIS more generally. Philip is ranked as a notable practitioner in the Chambers UK legal directory and as a foreign expert in the Chambers global legal directory. Philip is a regular speaker at the Euromoney Summer and Winter Schools of International Financial Law held at Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
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About : Making issuance and administration of financial instruments cheaper and faster while ensuring compliance
Ali Bernat
Advisor of Ernest
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About : Ernest is a personal Banker for All powered by Artificial Intelligence: a chatbot that answers questions, gives insights & forecasts issues.
Steve Cook
Biometrics Technical Advisor of FinTech Connect
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About : FinTech Connect is a free global network offering for the fintech industry, hosting live events, a connection portal, and original content.
Steve Cook
Biometrics Technical Advisor of FinTech Connect
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About : FinTech Connect is a free global network offering for the fintech industry, hosting live events, a connection portal, and original content.
Janet Thomas
RIsk Advisor of Moneymailme
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About : Moneymailme is a mobile application that enables its users to receive and transfer payments with others.
Leo Dunne
Advisor and Mentor of WonderCharts
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About : WonderCharts is an online platform that enables financial traders to learn, monitor, analyze, and trade.
