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 London based VP’ operating in the FinTech space. If you think a VP’ 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.
Nilan Peiris
VP of Growth of Wise
Nilan Peiris is VP Growth at TransferWise, the international money transfer platform. TransferWise is the low cost and fair way of transferring money internationally. Using peer-to-peer technology and without any hidden fees, it makes sending money abroad up to ten times cheaper compared to using a bank. TransferWise customers send £500m every month using the platform, and it’s attracted $91m from investors such as world’s largest VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, Sir Richard Branson, Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, the co-founders of PayPal. Prior to TransferWise Nilan was VP Growth at HouseTrip, in charge of scaling the company’s growth in the European market. He’s also worked as Chief Marketing Technology Officer at Holiday Extras, where he was responsible for all areas of technology, marketing and customer acquisition. Nilan also advises a number of early stage startups on growth and getting to traction.
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About Wise: Wise is a money transfer service allowing private individuals and businesses to send money abroad without hidden charges.
Maor Fishman
Deputy General Counsel, VP Data Protection of Checkout.com
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About Checkout.com: Checkout.com is a global payments solution provider on a mission to enable businesses and their communities to thrive in the digital economy
Peter Wilson
VP Data & Growth of Blockchain.com
Peter Wilson is the Vice President of Engineering for Blockchain.com, a financial technology, and data company that has empowered millions of users across the globe to store and transact digital value quickly and without costly intermediaries. Peter is responsible for leading and growing the engineering team that has helped Blockchain become the market leader in digital currency and distributed ledger technology, with 25M wallets. Prior to joining Blockchain, Peter lived and worked in the US, in engineering leadership roles at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. Peter was the co-founder and CEO of Rel8tion, a mobile advertising company acquired by Facebook. He is an avid musician and consumer of the arts. If you are working on something hard and want to be in touch – please get in touch, but include a book recommendation.
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About Blockchain.com: Blockchain.com is a platform that offers ways to buy, hold, and use cryptocurrency.
Janina Lowisz
Co-Founder and VP Marketing of Cashaa
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About Auxesis Group, Cashaa: Next Generation Banking Platform
Hélène Alunni-Botteri
Senior Vice President, Innovation Group of Wells Fargo
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About Wells Fargo: Wells Fargo & Company is a diversified financial services company with $1.3 trillion assets providing banking, insurance, and investments.
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.
Stephen Lemon
Co-Founder | Vice President | Strategic Partnerships & Corporate Development of Currencycloud
Steve has worked in Foreign exchange and international payments, pretty much forever, and participated in the first FinTech of the late 90s wave (before it was even called Fintech) as founding team member of HiFX. The current, product lead revolution has tipped him over the edge and he’s now a fully paid up FinTech geek, of the opinion that we live in exciting times and that Open APIs will change the world. Stephen currently also serves as a Non-Executive Director and Advisor for a number of early stage FinTech companies, and has recently mentored for the 2017 cohort at Techsters. In his personal time Steve is a keen amateur photographer, motorsport lover and live music fan.
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About Currencycloud: Currencycloud specializes in a fully cloud-based platform for B2B cross-border payments.
Esme Harwood
Vice President, Public Policy of Barclays
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About Barclays: Barclays is a global financial services company that provides various financial products and services worldwide.
Richard Harris
EVP Head Of Global Sales of Feedzai
A veteran in both the finance and technology industries, Richard is helping to lead Feedzai’s global scaling. Before joining Feedzai, Richard held Vice President roles at both Experian and Accertify, during which time he built global sales teams and helped lead regional expansion. Richard has held leadership positions with Visa and PayPal, following various technical and development roles, and has also served as a member on the board of the Merchant Risk Council.
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About Feedzai: Feedzai develops risk management tools to prevent fraud and money laundering in transactions.
Richard Jones
SVP of Wagestream
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About Wagestream: Wagestream is a financial services firm that allows employees to stream their earned wages into their accounts through an instant app.
Lisa Macedo
Vice President of Moody’s Investors Service
Lisa Macedo is a Vice President – Senior Analyst in Moody’s Investors Service Structured Finance Group, based in London. She has been responsible for assigning ratings to over 100 securitisation transactions. The asset classes encompass peer-to-peer, consumer loans, student loans, credit card receivables, auto ABS, CMBS, non- performing loans, and all RMBS asset types: non-conforming, reperforming, warehouse, reverse mortgage, master trusts, prime and buy to let loans. She has covered EMEA, APAC and US jurisdictions including Germany, Netherlands, UK, France, Spain, Italy and Portugal. Currently she is responsible for surveillance of consumer asset securitisations, focused on the UK, Russia, Ireland and is also involved in rating methodology projects, research on market relevant topics, and has been involved in special focus groups covering matters including Brexit and IBOR transition.
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About Moody’s Investors Service: Moody’s Investors Service is a bond credit rating business that provides research, credit rating, and financial risk analysis services.
Michael Sim
Vice President of Fidelity International Strategic Ventures
Michael sources deals, conducts due diligence and carries out financial modelling to support the Principal Investments team. He is also helping to develop Eight Roads’ position in FinTech and manages its portfolio of listed stocks.
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About Fidelity International Strategic Ventures: Fidelity International Strategic Ventures invests in fintech businesses and technologies.
Julie Kainz
Vice President of Dawn Capital
Julie Kainz currently works as the Vice President for Dawn Capital. She previously worked at Salesforce Ventures as a Senior Associate.
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About Dawn Capital: Dawn Capital is an early-stage venture fund that focuses on investing in the enterprise software and FinTech sectors.
Javaad Rasool
VP of Talent of Habito
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About Habito: Habito is a digital mortgage brokerage services company that offers a personal and modernized approach to the home buying experience.
Max Rothery
VP Community of Finimize
Max is responsible for engagement with Finimize’s 500,000 global audience. Empowering the next generation of investors on and offline across 25 different countries. Previously leading innovation and digital strategy in wealth management at Societe Generale in the UK.
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About Finimize: Finimize is building the #1 information platform & community for modern investors.
Marc Baudry
Vice President of Riverside Company
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About Riverside Company, Trex: The Riverside Company is a private equity firm investing in companies with enterprise values of under $200 million.
Richard Wray
Vice President of Operations of Carta Worldwide
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About Carta Worldwide: Carta Worldwide is an international leader in digital transaction technology, specializing in mobile & emerging payments.
Samuel Heather
VP, Chief Technology Officer of KodyPay
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About KodyPay: Revolutionising in-person payments to grow your business with a trustworthy and innovative solution.
Maria Campbell
VP People of Griffin
People Ops person building companies where people love to do great work.
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About Griffin: Griffin is a Banking-as-a-Service provider that helps companies build and launch financial services products.
James Winter
SVP, Europe of Thunes
James Winter is the senior vice president, Europe for Thunes.
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About Thunes: Thunes offers a global cross-border payment network for seamless transfer of funds to 100 countries in 60 currencies.
David Byron
SVP Global Alliances and New Markets and General Manager of Global Sales and Marketing of CUBE
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About CUBE: CUBE is a global RegTech provider empowering regulated financial institutions to meet compliance challenges head on.
Dave Nicholson
VP Strategy & Partnerships & Co-Founder of Yoyo Wallet
Dave is a co-founder and VP Strategy & Partnerships at Yoyo Wallet, responsible for ensuring that Yoyo continues to innovate and scale in the digital loyalty space through building relationships with partners. Before starting Yoyo, he was co-founder and Head of Product at Zopa – the world’s first peer to peer lender.
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About Yoyo Wallet: Yoyo Wallet is a mobile payment, loyalty and marketing platform.
Geraldine Butler-Wright
VP of People and Culture of Yoyo Wallet
Geraldine joined Yoyo as their VP of People and Culture in June 2018. Her role is to curate an exceptional culture to attract, develop and retain brilliant minds to grow our awesome product. Geraldine, who has more than 15 years’ experience in HR, has worked across industries, to include heading up talent acquisition at Imperial College – the first university to adopt Yoyo, when the company launched in 2014. Prior to Imperial, Geraldine worked at PayPal, where she delivered strategic hires across EMEA during a period of rapid international growth. She has also lead change initiatives with global organisations, to include the US Government.
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About Healthily by Your.MD, Yoyo Wallet: Yoyo Wallet is a mobile payment, loyalty and marketing platform.
Cynthia Worley
SVP Europe of essDOCS
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About essDOCS: essDOCS enables paperless trade; focusing on digitizing paper-heavy shipping, trade and logistic processes.
Edward Sweigart
Vice President Global Partners & Ecosystem of Finastra
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About Finastra: Finastra provides the broadest portfolio of financial services software.
Ulyana Shtybel, Ph.D.
Chief Capital Officer and Vice President of the Board of HighCastle
PhD in Economics, Former Executive Director of the Warsaw Stock Exchange in Ukraine, Head of Banking and Financial Services Committee at the American Chamber of Commerce, commercial bank trainee with 180 loan specialists under supervision. Named the Digital Leader of the Year Finalist, London Regional Finalist for the Forward Ladies National Awards 2019 and Blockchain Leader Finalist for the Women in Tech Awards.
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About HighCastle: One powerful platform for private companies to manage investment workflow, equity and debt securities
Ahmed Wagih Khalil
Vice President of Hamilton Lane
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About Hamilton Lane: Hamilton Lane is a firm that provides private equity investment management services.
Nicky Koopman
SVP Business Solutions of AEVI
Nicky is a pioneer in digital innovation and is responsible for bringing together AEVI’s digital business solutions. She has over 15 years’ experience working in broadcast media, eCommerce and FinTech industry – developing digital business & growth strategies and scaling these across markets and customers.
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About AEVI: AEVI provides a platform for merchant-facing businesses that enables them to upgrade to more agile, more data-driven propositions.
Mark Roberts
SVP Sales & Marketing of Miura Systems
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About Charity Engine, Miura Systems: Miura Systems provides secure electronic payment hardware for the retail, hospitality, financial, government and healthcare markets.
Elisabete Orfao
Senior Vice President of Ardent Advisors
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About Ardent Advisors: Strategic corporate finance advice in the e-commerce and digital technology market.
