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 Product operating in the Finance space. If you think a Product 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.
Sharon Anne Kean
Product Lead – International Expansion of Wise
Product, UX, tech and start-ups. Excitable, empathetic, enthusiastic. Love a challenge.
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About Wise: Wise is a money transfer service allowing private individuals and businesses to send money abroad without hidden charges.
Gregory Talon
Senior Product Director of Wise
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About Wise: Wise is a money transfer service allowing private individuals and businesses to send money abroad without hidden charges.
Tessa Pettman
Head of Product Marketing. of Wise
Tessa Pettman is the head of product marketing at TransferWise.
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About Wise: Wise is a money transfer service allowing private individuals and businesses to send money abroad without hidden charges.
George Berkowski
Chief Product Officer of Gocompare.com
George is currently the CPO at GoCompare, and Founder of DeepAR.ai Formerly CPO for HAILO – the international Taxi App (acquired by Daimler) Co-founder and CPO of dating site WooMe.com (acquired by Zoosk.com) Head of Internet Strategy & eCommerce at BT.com VP Marketing and Business Development at MirCorp (facilitated the first 2 space tourist flights with Rosaviakosmos). Has a masters from the Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Paris Rocket science @ Massachusetts Institute of Technology. George is the author of the new best-selling book (Little, Brown), ‘How to Build a Billion Dollar App’.
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About DeepAR, Gocompare.com: Gocompare.com is a British financial services comparison website provides comparison details for vehicle, home and pet insurance.
Terry Cordeiro
Head of Product Management – Digital, Transformation of Lloyds Banking Group
A senior professional passionate about Digital, Product Management, Innovation and Design, Terry has recently been voted one of the 50 most innovative and powerful people in European digital financial services. Terry is also co-author for the Fintech Book, the worlds first crowd sourced book on Fintech. Terry has over 15 years Product Management, Solution Design and Proposition Development experience in technology areas such as fixed voice, VoIP, mobile banking/payments architecture and software design.
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About Lloyds Banking Group: Lloyds Banking Group is a major British financial institution formed through the acquisition of HBOS by Lloyds TSB in 2009.
Oliver Quayle
Product & GTM – Access People of The Access Group
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About The Access Group: The Access Group is a software consultancy and developer company that provides fully integrated business management software.
Chris Massey
Product Manager of The Access Group
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About The Access Group: The Access Group is a software consultancy and developer company that provides fully integrated business management software.
Ben Chisell
Director of Product of OakNorth
Ben Chisell is Product Director at Starling Bank, a modern mobile-only bank built to help customers gain better insight into their financial lives, and give them access to all of their financial products in one place through the Starling Marketplace. Ben wants to build a bank that truly puts the customer first, and solves meaningful problems that can have a positive impact on their lives.
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About OakNorth: OakNorth is the creator of the ON Credit Intelligence Suite – proven cloud software that transforms commercial lending
Antonio Gagliardi
Vice President – Strategy, Product, and Analytics – Merchant Services of American Express
Before founding CompareEuropeGroup, Antonio was an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company in their UK Financial Services practice. Prior to this, Antonio worked at Bain & Co and at JP Morgan Chase. Antonio holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, with a special distinction for finishing in the top 10%, and graduated summa cum laude from Bocconi University.
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About American Express: American Express is a global financial services company best known for its credit card, charge card, and traveler’s cheque businesses.
Bobby Chadha
Head of Product – Payments of Banco Santander
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About Banco Santander, MaxTax: Banco Santander is a retail and commercial bank that offers financial products for individuals.
Brian Simpson-Adkins
Product Owner Infrastructure as Code & Principle DevOps Engineer of Barclays
Brian Simpson-Adkins is the Product Owner for Infrastructure as Code at Barclays and is responsible for the strategy, architecture and development of tooling covering this space. It’s his ambition to enable application developers to drive the hybrid clouds at Barclays using code based technologies and to teach their application teams how to deploy infrastructure in a consistent and repeatable manner using code. Brian has spent the past 20 years working in Infrastructure and the last 9 years with Virtualisation or Cloud technologies. He’s had a varied career having worked in both the media and service provider industries. For the last 8 years he’s been based at Barclays in the UK.
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About Barclays: Barclays is a global financial services company that provides various financial products and services worldwide.
Chris Johnson
Senior Product Manager, Market Data of HSBC
Chris joined HSBC Securities Services in 2006 and is the Head of Product Management, Market Data Services. Chris was previously at Threadneedle Investments where he was Head of Investment Information Services. Before then he was a Director at UBS. Chris started work in the city with Laurie, Milbank stockbrokers, in their futures and options operations team, continuing with Chase Manhattan for a further ten years, culminating in three years as head of the equity derivatives middle office. He also headed OTC derivative client valuations at Bankers Trust. Chris is a member of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment
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About HSBC: HSBC is a banking and financial services organization that offers a comprehensive range of services.
Rachel Robinson
Head of Digital Strategy & Product Development of Nationwide Building Society
Rachel is Head of Digital Strategy and Product Development at Nationwide Building Society, where she shapes Nationwide’s digital vision and roadmap and works with teams to set clear, value orientated goals. Rachel started her career in consultancy at Arthur Andersen and Ernst & Young, before moving into digital product development. She’s worked with a wide variety of organisations, from start-ups and scale-ups to listed companies in retail, travel and housing/financial services, before joining Nationwide in 2013. Since joining the Building Society she has worked in a variety of leadership roles across digital banking, innovation and product development – and played a lead role in Nationwide’s agile transformation story over the last 18 months.
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About Nationwide Building Society: Nationwide Building Society is a British mutual financial institution and the largest building society in the UK.
Martin Eriksson
Operating Partner, Product of EQT Ventures
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About EQT Ventures, ProductCamp, ProductTank: EQT Ventures provides support and capital to bold and ambitious founders on their journeys to global success.
Joel Ippoliti
Chief Product Officer of Seedrs
Joel helps companies achieve new growth by focusing their products on opportunities in the market and better addressing the needs of its users. He has experience bringing products to market from concept to launch – end to end – including gathering the evidence to provide the initial direction through to running multidisciplinary teams to deliver.
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About Ippolito International, Seedrs: Seedrs is a UK-based investment and crowdfunding platform.
Jared Harding
Head of Product of Sweatcoin
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About Dynamify, Sweatcoin: Sweatcoin is a digital currency backed by economic value of physical movement.
Steve Farrugia
Product Owner of Pepperstone
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About Pepperstone: Pepperstone is an Australian online retail foreign exchange broker specializing in foreign exchange trading.
Ciprian Blujdea
Product Manager of Juni
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About Juni: Juni is a fintech company that develops a banking app and platform for e-commerce and online marketing entrepreneurs.
Mark Winterburn
Chief Product Officer of Temenos
Mr. Mark Winterburn has been responsible for the product organization since joining in 2011. Mr. Winterburn has over 35 years’ experience in IT, 30 of them in financial services. Prior to joining Temenos, Mr. Winterburn held the position of VP Solutions Management & Product Development at Misys, and held a number of senior positions at Lloyds TSB, with a proven track record of driving large and complex IT change programmes. He has studied Leadership, Product, Cultural and Change Management at Harvard Business School, Cranfield University and Henley Management School. Mr. Winterburn studied a Software Engineering diploma at Coventry University, England.
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About Temenos: Temenos Group is a market leading provider of banking software systems.
Alison Bloom-Feshbach
Senior Product Manager of CommonBond
Alison Bloom-Feshbach is a Senior Product Manager at CommondBond.co. She is a former CEO and Co-Founder of Know Your Crew and Consulting Associate at Arc Aspicio. Ms. Bloom-Feshbach graduated from Yale University with a bachelor of arts in Cognitive Science (Decision-making concentration) and received an MBA in Organizational Strategy and Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania – The Wharton School.
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About CommonBond: CommonBond was founded in 2012 to help relieve the student loan burden, and since then we’ve funded over $4 billion in better loans.
Karl Knoflach
Chairman, Co-Founder, Head of Marketing and Product of C88 Financial Technologies
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About C88 Financial Technologies: C88 connects banks and insurers in Asia to consumers buying financial products online.
James Carlyle
Chief Information Officer & Head of Production of R3
James is R3’s Chief Information Officer and is focused on defining a candidate architecture and building out a collaborative lab for experimentation. Previously, James was Chief Engineer within Corporate Banking at Barclays, where he designed and delivered the bank’s corporate internet channel, and the bank’s US banking and dollar clearing platforms. Before Barclays, James co-founded two start-ups and holds patents in mobile data search and directory technology. He is a Chartered Engineer and holds a degree in Engineering Science from University College, Durham.
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About R3: R3 is a financial innovation firm dedicated to the design and deployment of DLT to build the new operating system for financial services.
Muneeb Shah
Head Product Commercialisation and Strategy- Payments of R3
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About R3: R3 is a financial innovation firm dedicated to the design and deployment of DLT to build the new operating system for financial services.
Rodolfo Picciau
Director, OMS Product Development and Engineering of FactSet
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About FactSet: FactSet is a financial research company that offers risk analytics tools and real time data feeds for institutional investors.
Tom Stenhouse
Head of Product, Equities of London Stock Exchange Group
Tom Stenhouse is the Head of Product, Equities at London Stock Exchange Group.
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About London Stock Exchange Group: London Stock Exchange Group is an international market infrastructure that delivers a range of insights to its financial community.
Richard Kelly
Director & Head of New Product Development of Foresight Group
Richard Kelly joined Foresight Group in 2014 and currently works as a Director in the London office. He has over 11 years of experience. Richard is responsible for the development and launch of innovative investment products and new business divisions. Prior to joining Foresight Richard worked at Accenture as a Strategy Manager where he focused on merger and acquisition strategy across a variety of industries. He has also worked as an Intern at Oxford Capital Partners, focusing on investment business plan screening and portfolio company performance improvement. Richard holds a BA in Business & Management from Exeter University.
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About Foresight Group: Foresight is an infrastructure and private equity investment manager that manages funds on behalf of institutions and retail clients.
Ollie Maitland
Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer of Capitalise.com
Ollie Maitland is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Capitalise.com. He was the Innovation Practice Director of Inviqa.
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About Capitalise.com: Capitalise uses a little funding magic to identify the best financing options available for your business.
Paul Manze
Head of Product of Funding Xchange
Paul Manze is a Head of Product at Funding Xchange and Founder of Chaordic Limited and Acuherb Academy. He was a Product Manager and Development Manager at Insurance intermediary and Divisional Director of mFormation Technologies. Paul received a bachelor of science in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Westminster.
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About Funding Xchange: Funding Xchange is transforming and connecting the SME funding eco-system through digital eligibility and affordability assessment tools.
Phoebe Hugh
Head of New Products of Direct Line Insurance
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About Direct Line Insurance: Direct Line Group is an organization with a clear mission: to make insurance much easier and better value for customers.
Abbas Hasan
Head of Product and Strategy, SaaS and Outsourced Business Services of LPL Financial
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About LPL Financial: LPL Financial is the largest independent broker-dealer in the United States.
Alex Ryvkin
Chief Product Officer of Copper
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About Copper: Copper is a cryptocurrency custody firm that provides a secure infrastructure for the institutional digital asset investment community.
Tim Armstrong
Managing Director UK and Product Development of Greensill Capital
Tim Armstrong is a member of Greensill’s European team, focusing on developing partnerships within EMEA. Prior to joining Greensill, Tim worked at KPMG managing a Supply Chain Finance solution for clients which utilised partnerships with leading FinTech companies in combination with KPMG’s suite of advisory services. Prior to that, Tim worked in the corporate finance team in Deloitte, working closely with the UK Government’s Department of Business, and at Morgan Stanley, in their securitisation team.
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About Greensill Capital: Greensill Capital is a provider of structured working capital financing to businesses globally.
Ryan Hanley
Crypto Product Manager of Elwood Asset Management
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About Elwood Asset Management: Elwood asset management offers financial exposure in blockchain technology and cryptocurrency to listed companies.
Kenny Leitch
Product & Pricing Director of RSA Insurance Group
Kenny Leitch is a Product & Pricing Director at RSA.
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About RSA Insurance Group: RSA is a multinational insurance group.
Kenny Leitch
Product & Pricing Director of RSA Insurance Group
Kenny Leitch is a Product & Pricing Director at RSA.
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About RSA Insurance Group: RSA is a multinational insurance group.
Edmund Stokes
Global Head of Product of HSBC Asset Management
Global Head of Product at HSBC Asset Management
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About HSBC Asset Management: HSBC Global Asset Management provides a comprehensive range of investment management solutions .
Laura Winter
Director of Insurance Product of Simply Business
Laura joined Simply Business in 2008 from Ageas, taking on her role as Director of Insurance Product in 2016. Managing a team of product specialists, Laura helps the business understand our customers’ needs through data and insight, before designing and building flexible, tailored products.
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About Simply Business: Simply Business is a business insurance broker that offers tailored business insurance quotes to its clients.
Braham Djidjelli
Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Hugo Save
Braham Djidjelli is the Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer at Hugo Save.
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About Hugo Save: Hugo is a digital account that helps you spend, save and invest, starting with gold.
Alex Myers
Director, Product Strategy of Exact
Alex Myers serves as director of product strategy at Exact.
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About Exact, RIMES Technologies: Exact is a company that provides cloud based business software for entrepreneurs and their accountants.
Andy Sweeney
Head of Fixed Income Products of Aviation and Tech Capital
Andy graduated from Cambridge University with an MA (Hons) in Law. He has over 16 years of experience in debt capital markets, all gained working in major global investment banks. He began his career at Citigroup with a focus on raising short term finance for companies via the commercial paper market. Subsequently he worked in the bond syndication teams at RBC Capital Markets and Mizuho International, advising banks, governments and corporates on issuing bonds across a range of currencies for periods of anything from one year to fifty years and in sizes ranging into the billions of pounds. He enjoys innovation and has been responsible for several innovative bond transactions, including creating a retail bond for a major UK bank and designing structures to effectively manage interest rate risk for borrowers. One of his roles in banking was to work to create liquid secondary markets for securities and he looks forward to bringing that experience to the peer-to-peer market. Andy understands that investment is about creating a fair transaction for both borrowers and investors.
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About Aviation and Tech Capital: Owner of Ablrate.com an asset backed peer lending platform specialising in capital equipment and the world’s first to offer aircraft loans
Deirdre Donovan
Head of Products of UK General Insurance
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About UK General Insurance: UK General Insurance provides personal lines insurance products and services for brokers.
William Goodwin
Co-founder & Head of Product of Tumelo
William Goodwin is the Co-Founder and Head of Product at Tumelo.
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About Tumelo: Tumelo is an impact-focused financial technology firm with the mission of giving every investor a voice.
Ian Watt
Chief Product Officer of Tellimer
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About Tellimer: Tellimer is a financial brokerage firm that insights, portfolio management, financial planning and advisory service.
Douglas Long
EVP – Business Development & Product of Principia
Douglas is responsible for business development and product. A frequent speaker on industry panels, author and contributor to the trade press, Douglas provides the leadership, quantitative skills and domain expertise to bridge the critical link between the market and the company’s product development team. In his previous role at Principia, as Director of Product Management, he helped develop specifications to build and integrate ABS/MBS instruments and structured credit derivatives capabilities into the solution. Prior to joining Principia, Douglas was Vice President at Deutsche Bank, leading research and quantitative analysis for interest and credit risk management. He also served as a quantitative analyst and financial engineer with Infinity (SunGard) and Renaissance Software in London, where he developed analytics used in handling fixed income, derivatives and structured finance securities.
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About Principia: Principia Partners provide a broad range of financial institutions, independent investment managers and advisors solutions.
Douglas Long
EVP – Business Development & Product of Principia
Douglas is responsible for business development and product. A frequent speaker on industry panels, author and contributor to the trade press, Douglas provides the leadership, quantitative skills and domain expertise to bridge the critical link between the market and the company’s product development team. In his previous role at Principia, as Director of Product Management, he helped develop specifications to build and integrate ABS/MBS instruments and structured credit derivatives capabilities into the solution. Prior to joining Principia, Douglas was Vice President at Deutsche Bank, leading research and quantitative analysis for interest and credit risk management. He also served as a quantitative analyst and financial engineer with Infinity (SunGard) and Renaissance Software in London, where he developed analytics used in handling fixed income, derivatives and structured finance securities.
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About Principia: Principia Partners provide a broad range of financial institutions, independent investment managers and advisors solutions.
