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 Managing Director operating in the FinTech space. If you think a Managing Director 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.
Paolo Simonato
Managing Director of BlackRock
Paolo Simonato, Managing Director, is a senior member of the investment team and head of the London office for BlackRock Private Equity Partners (PEP) within BlackRock Alternatives Investors (BAI). He has primary responsibility for the sourcing, diligence and monitoring of private equity funds, secondary transactions and direct co-investments with leading private equity firms across Europe.
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About BlackRock: BlackRock is an investment company that offers its services to institutions, intermediaries, foundations, and individual investors.
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Martin Cook
Managing Director of BlackRock
As EMEA Head of Technology & Operations, Cook is responsible for working closely with the Head of EMEA, the Chief Operating Officer and the BlackRock Executive Committee to ensure effective delivery of technology and operations within the EMEA Region. Prior to joining BlackRock in 2006, Cook spent ten years with Wall Street Systems in the design, development, and implementation of a front-to-back integrated trading system for global financial institutions, and two years in a similar role with Calypso Technology, a market-leading Derivatives Technology provider. Other industry roles included that of Assistant Treasurer at the London Office of Credit Agricole Indosuez, and the Derivatives Risk Controller at Foreign & Colonial Investment Management. Cook studied Mathematics, Economics and Physics at Palmers College, and “Institute of Bankers” professional qualifications at Thurrock Management College.
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About BlackRock: BlackRock is an investment company that offers its services to institutions, intermediaries, foundations, and individual investors.
Sandra Boss
Senior Managing Director, Global Head of Investment Stewardship of BlackRock
Sandra Boss has been a director of the Company since November 2015. Ms. Boss has served since September 2014 as an independent director of the Prudential Regulation Authority, part of the Bank of England responsible for the prudential regulation and supervision of around 1,700 banks, building societies, credit unions, insurers and major investment firms. Ms. Boss was a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, from 2005 to 2014, and a Partner from 2000.
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About BlackRock: BlackRock is an investment company that offers its services to institutions, intermediaries, foundations, and individual investors.
Brett Pybus
Managing Director – Head of iShares EMEA Investment and Product Strategy of BlackRock
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About BlackRock: BlackRock is an investment company that offers its services to institutions, intermediaries, foundations, and individual investors.
Ilya Kondrashov
Co-founder & Managing Director of MarketFinance
Having spent three years working within one of the world’s largest legacy financial institutions, Ilya was exposed to the outdated service banks were providing to private businesses. He realised that business owners felt let down by their bank, and set out to build a better alternative. He also represents MarketInvoice in its efforts to promote transparency and fairness within the alternative finance industry, sitting on multiple compliance and regulatory bodies including the P2PFA.
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About MarketFinance: MarketFinance is a FinTech company providing business finance solutions that help companies grow.
Reid Marsh
Managing Director of Barclays
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About Barclays: Barclays is a global financial services company that provides various financial products and services worldwide.
James Binns
Managing Director, Global Head of Trade and Working Capital of Barclays
James Binns is the Global Head of Trade and Working Capital for Barclays, which serves Corporate, NBFI and FI clients globally with teams located in UK, Europe, Americas, Asia and the Middle East. Prior to joining Barclays, James spent 4.5 years at Deutsche Bank where he headed Working Capital Advisory and Trade Finance for EMEA and latterly Global Cross Product Solutions. This followed 20 years at HSBC where James was based across Asia Pacific, the Middle East, USA and UK in a number of senior Corporate Banking and Trade Finance roles.
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About Barclays: Barclays is a global financial services company that provides various financial products and services worldwide.
Roger Kennedy
Managing Director of Cantor Fitzgerald
Roger Kennedy is the Managing Director at Cantor Fitzgerald.
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About Cantor Fitzgerald: Cantor Fitzgerald is a global financial services firm that specializes in equities, investment banking, and real estate.
Blake Kleinman
Managing Director of Hellman & Friedman
Blake Kleinman is a Managing Director at Hellman & Friedman in the London office. Blake is a Director of Scout24, SSP Holdings plc and Wood Mackenzie. Blake was formerly a Director of Gartmore Investment Management Limited and IRIS Software Group Limited and was active in the Firm’s investments in Arch Capital Group Ltd., Axel Springer AG, Mondrian Investment Partners Ltd., ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, and The Nielsen Company. Prior to joining the Firm in 2001, Blake worked in the Mergers, Acquisitions and Restructurings Department at Morgan Stanley & Co. in New York. Blake graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
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About Hellman & Friedman: Hellman & Friedman is a private equity investment firm providing strategic and financial management support to businesses.
Zita Saurel
Managing Director of Hellman & Friedman
Zita joined H&F in 2005. She is active in the Firm’s investment in Scout24. Zita also has responsibility for the Firm’s capital markets activities in Europe related to new investments and for portfolio companies. She was formerly a Director of Wood Mackenzie and Web Reservations and was active in the Firm’s investments in IRIS, Nielsen and Gartmore. Prior to H&F, Zita worked at Investcorp in London and the Leveraged Finance department of Lehman Brothers in London. Zita is fluent in English, French, and Spanish.
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About Hellman & Friedman: Hellman & Friedman is a private equity investment firm providing strategic and financial management support to businesses.
Stuart Banks
Managing Director & General Counsel, Europe of Hellman & Friedman
Stuart joined H&F in 2007 and is responsible for overseeing the Firm’s legal matters in Europe related to prospective investments and portfolio companies. Prior to H&F, Stuart was an associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in London. During this time, he also completed a two-year secondment to the U.K.’s Panel on Takeovers and Mergers. Stuart completed his legal training with Travers Smith, qualifying as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales in 2000.
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About Hellman & Friedman: Hellman & Friedman is a private equity investment firm providing strategic and financial management support to businesses.
Adriana Marques
Managing Director, Europe and Global Network of Zepz
Adriana Marques is responsible for growing WorldRemit’s business in the European region as well as driving the expansion of the network globally by integrating new pay out partners, and launching money transfer services in new geographies. Adriana has over 20 years of experience in leading and developing teams, having previously held senior strategy and business development roles at Sodexo and American Express. Prior to joining WorldRemit in October 2017, Adriana served as Head of Merchant and VAS at Samsung launching Samsung Pay in the UK. Adriana holds an MBA from London Business School and a BA in Economics from Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil.
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About Zepz: Zepz is a money transfer service that helps migrants send money to their loved ones all over the world.
Edward Glyn
Managing Director, Head of Global Markets, Global Head of Relationship Management of Calastone
Edward Glyn joined Calastone in 2014 and is responsible for managing and developing key client relationships across our global markets. Before joining Calastone, Edward spent nine years at SWIFT, most recently heading up the 100m transaction funds business across EMEA and leading the regional sales team managing SWIFT’s investment management, custody and asset servicing offerings. Prior to this, Edward spent a number of years in key commercial and strategic roles at Investia – former parent of JPMorgan FundsHub, ERI Bancaire, Thomson Financial and Tajan.
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About Calastone: Calastone is a global transaction network for the mutual fund industry.
David Tibbetts
UK and Nordics Managing Director of Web Financial Group
David Tibbetts has been UK Managing Director of Web Financial Group SA since September 1, 2017. Mr. Tibbetts has been the Head of Proquote and Managing Director at Proquote Limited since 2009. Mr. Tibbetts served as Managing Director of UK – Financial Markets at IRESS Limited until April 1, 2017. He joined IRESS in November 2015 following the Proquote acquisition. He served as Managing Director at Proquote since 2008 and has a wealth of experience in the financial software industry from managing Singularity’s UK business and through other roles at Mercator Software and Braid Systems.
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About Web Financial Group: Web Financial Group continues is data-driven managed service solutions provider.
Rebecca Skitt
Group Managing Director of 10xbanking
Rebecca leads the development and progress of 10x. Supported by an executive leadership team, her role is to bring the 10x vision to life. Rebecca joined 10x in December 2016 as Chief Operating Officer, moving to her current role in May 2018. An experienced global business leader, Rebecca’s career has taken her around the world with high profile brands including Unilever and Barclays. She has deep experience in enabling business transformation, building high-performance cultures and establishing innovation capability worldwide. Rebecca is known for her passion for attracting and mobilising top talent to deliver on breakthrough strategies.
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About 10xbanking: 10xbanking offers a digital banking platform that will transform the way financial services providers operate.
Rodney Bain
Co-Founder & Managing Director of APEXX Global
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About APEXX Global: APEXX consolidates global payment providers into a single integration point, optimising the cost of complex payment ecosystems.
Max Firth
Managing Director of Funding Xchange
Max Firth is a Managing Director of Funding Xchange and NED at Artesian Solutions. He was the Managing Director of Aptdicum Ltd and Experian.
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About Artesian Solutions, Funding Xchange: Funding Xchange is transforming and connecting the SME funding eco-system through digital eligibility and affordability assessment tools.
David Browne
Managing Director of Terra Firma
David is a Managing Director at Terra Firma with 15 years of experience in private equity and investment banking. Prior to joining Terra Firma in 2018, David was a Director at Paine Schwartz, LLC, a US-based fund focused on private equity opportunities in agribusiness, where he managed transactions in Europe, the US and Australia. Prior to Paine Schwartz, David was a Managing Director at GSC Group, where he focused on distressed-for-control investing across a broad range of industries. Earlier in his career, David was an Associate at Lindsay Goldberg and an Analyst in the M&A Group at Credit Suisse. Among his responsibilities at Terra Firma, David is currently overseeing the sale of Australian beef producer, Consolidated Pastoral Company. David holds a bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, in government from Harvard College. He has an MBA, awarded with highest distinction, from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. David speaks English and, thanks to his wife, Italian. David is married with two children. In the time not absorbed by his children, David’s interests include training, sport (formerly baseball and now Premier League football), and reading.
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About Terra Firma: Terra Firma is a private equity firm based in London, United Kingdom.
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.
Brett Downes
Managing Director and Chief Risk Officer of Greensill Capital
Brett is responsible for all aspects of credit and operational risk within Greensill. Prior to working at Greensill, Brett headed the EMEA Trade Credit Risk team at Citi where he was responsible for managing the credit and operational risk for the Letters of Credit, Trade Finance, Export Credit Agency, Commodities, Insurance Letters of Credit, and Supply Chain businesses. Prior to that he held various risk and front office positions at Commerzbank, Barclays Wealth and National Australia Bank. Brett holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Queensland, a Masters in Applied Finance & Investment from Macquarie University and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from Melbourne Business School.
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About Greensill Capital: Greensill Capital is a provider of structured working capital financing to businesses globally.
Simon Cullen
Founder and Managing Director of Risksave Technologies
Simon Cullen is a founder of RiskSave, a financial technology and compliance firm. He has a first-class degree in mathematics and a masters in economics from Trinity College Dublin and is a qualified Financial Risk Manager (FRM). Simon worked for over fifteen years in banking and asset management, formerly being Head of Credit for Structured Debt for a large European Asset Manager. Simon has 15 years’ experience dealing with regulatory compliance and risk across banks and asset managers and oversees RiskSave’s compliance platform.
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About Risksave Technologies: Risksave Technologies is a fast-growing provider of regulatory hosting services.
Kebbie Sebastian
Managing Director of Penser
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About Penser: Specialist consulting firm focused on the payments and fintech industry
Mike Ransom
Managing Director of Quint Group
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About Quint Group: Quint is a international, highly innovative fintech Group operating in consumer finance markets globally.
Ravi Anand
Managing Director of ThinCats
Ravi’s involvement in a range of financial markets and businesses ensures ThinCats occupies an increasingly unique position in the SME funding landscape -not just another alternative lender. Ravi has more than 30 years of financial services experience. He has created businesses and led numerous corporate transactions, in senior roles at boutique investment bank, Dexion Capital, start up to growth asset manager, New Star, and with traditional big company experience from HSBC Investment Bank, Flemings and KPMG.
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About ThinCats: ThinCats is an alternative finance provider dedicated to funding growing and ambitious mid-sized SMEs across the UK.
Jeffrey Fredrick
Managing Director of TIM Group
Jeffrey Fredrick is an internationally recognised expert on software development. He joined TIM Group in 2011 as a 20-year veteran with experience across the software development lifecycle. An early adopter of XP and Agile software development, he has consistently been at the forefront of software development. Jeffrey joined TIM Group from Urbancode where as Chief Evangelist he was a regular speaker and coach on Agile development. Before Urbancode Jeffrey was an independent consultant for software companies on topics including corporate strategy, product management, and interaction design. Jeffrey’s Silicon Valley experience includes time at Agitar where he was VP of Product Management, and Alphablox where he was a pioneer in modern continuous integration practices. Jeffrey was also founder and VP of Engineering at OpenAvenue, an early software-as-service company offering web hosted development tools. Jeffrey began his career at Borland International where he was manager of online services and then a founding member of the JBuilder development team. In addition to his role at TIM Group Jeffrey is also indulging his passion for improving how software is made as a Technical Advisor to SauceLabs and as the Co-Organiser of the Continuous Integration and Testing Conference (CITCON).
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About Citcon, Open Information Foundation, TIM Group: TIM Group is a provider of alpha-generating information technologies for the financial services industry.
Paul Brett
Managing Director, Intermediaries of LANDBAY
Paul has over 20 years experience in the financial services and lending industries and over 10 years specialist business development expertise. Prior to joining borro Paul worked at Fastcom as the Sales and Marketing Director and at SPML as the Head of Sales. He also formed the Mortgage Industry Association and brand “Freehold” by successfully bringing together 25 companies in the industry with a collective £1.6 billion of distribution. Paul also brings to the table several years of consultancy experience, devising strategies for several multi million pound turnover private companies.
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About LANDBAY: Landbay is a specialist Buy to Let mortgage lender using peer-to-peer technology to fund its loans.
Serge Lubensky
Founder | Executive Managing Director of ReTool Ventures
Serge is a geek who enjoys finding pragmatic solutions to difficult problems. Along the way, he managed to become a successful entrepreneur with a track record of starting, growing and selling technology companies. Serge grew up in a family of scientists and artists. Not smart enough to become a scientist and not creative enough to be an artist, Serge chose to pursue a computer engineering degree in his hometown of Minsk strictly to avoid being drafted into the Russian Army during the Soviets’ invasion of Afghanistan. Serge’s first successful exit, from a failing 70-year old startup called the USSR, occurred in 1988. Fresh off the boat, Serge joined a computer company in Queens, NY, developing software for service contractors. Architecting and supporting a system that businesses relied on allowed Serge to learn the intricacies of the commercial repair and maintenance trades and ways to apply technology to solve real-life challenges for business owners and their field technicians. In the process, Serge and the company’s founder, Steven Gottfried, became friends and business partners and started to formulate plans for their next business venture. In 1999, Steven and Serge founded a cloud-based facilities management platform, ServiceChannel, with the goal of transforming the highly inefficient multi-billion dollar commercial repair and maintenance industry. As with their previous company, which was successfully sold, Steven was the idea generator and a master salesman, while Serge worked behind the scenes as CTO to help ServiceChannel achieve a dominant position in the global facilities management marketplace. In 2016, Serge moved to London to accelerate ServiceChannel’s expansion in Europe. In the summer of 2017, Accel, an elite technology VC firm, invested $54M in ServiceChannel continuing to fuel its growth and allowing Steven and Serge to realize a highly successful exit. Now Steven and Serge run ReTool Ventures, a technology investment firm.
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About Equip ID, ReTool Ventures: ReTool Ventures is a new technology investment firm that seeks to retool the facilities management industry by curating a “digital toolbox”
Charlie Henderson
Managing Directors & Founder of FeedStock Ltd
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About FeedStock Ltd: FeedStock leverages AI and NLP technologies to enable financial services companies to satisfy both their compliance and commercial goals.
Louise McCarthy
Managing Director Female Entrepreneurship of Evrensel Capital Partners
Louise Mccarthy, Arachnys CFO is the former COO, Global Digital IT transformation director at HSBC. Louise started her career in finance and is a qualified ACCA, she held a number of CFO roles in major international corporations. She was a finalist for ‘Women in IT’ in 2017 & 2018 and brings over 35 years’ experience in large private and public sector organisations, including Transformation Director at EBRD, Aviva, HRMC and Virgin Media.
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About Evrensel Capital Partners: Evrensel Capital Partners is a global corporate finance advice and asset management firm.
Francois Terrade
Head of Structuring (Europe) – Managing Director of Demica
Francois Terrade joined Demica in November 2015. With more than 20 years of experience with Société Générale CIB and GE Capital in cross-border receivables financing, Francois helps corporates and private equity funds across Europe secure working capital solutions in France and in Europe by way of securitisation, factoring or asset-based financing in order to meet their strategic objectives.
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About Demica: Demica provides innovative working capital solutions to major corporations and financial institutions.
Andrey Dobrynin
Co-Founder and Managing Director of InvestEngine
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About InvestEngine, Larixon Classifieds: InvestEngine is an investment management company that builds smart applications to managed stocks, shares, and general portfolio accounts.
Krasimir Kirov
Managing Director of Madara Invest
Krasimir Kirov is the Founder and Managing Director of Madara Invest. Prior to this position, he was Managing Director of Hanson Asset Management (FCA authorised and regulated) a successful London based wealth management company. Prior to joining HAM as a Managing Director, he was CEO of a fully licensed, EU regulated asset management and brokerage firm that is a member of Deutsche Börse Group. Under his management, the company won various industry awards, reached an annual transactions value of over GBP 0.5 billion and assets under administration of over GBP 250 million. He participates in international industry forums and events as a guest speaker or lecturer and his contributions are regularly published in financial journals.
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About Madara Invest: FinTech, Innovation, Technology
Shum Singh
Managing Director & Founder of Agnitio Capital
Shum Singh is the founder and managing director of Agnitio Capital Limited
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About Agnitio Capital: Agnitio Capital is a fully authorised and regulated investment bank focused on digital media and games.
Anthony Lyall
Managing Director and Co-Founder of Lyall Ventures
Anthony Lyall is the managing director and co-founder at Lyall Ventures.
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About Lyall Ventures, NOTWICS: Lyall Ventures is an angel investment company that focuses on travel and travel technology start-ups.
Marek Wakar
Managing Director, Catelas UK of Catelas
Marek has 20 years experience in retail financial services covering strategy, distribution, operations, and general management. He has held senior positions within the Lloyds Abbey Life Group (within three business units and centrally in the plc) and then moved on to Accenture where he was an Associate Partner. In the last five years Marek has run and part-owned a consultancy company which specializes in advising insurance companies; he has also invested in and advised smaller companies. Marek graduated in 1980 from the University of Durham and in 1987 obtained an MBA from the London Business School.
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About Catelas: Catelas offers e-surveillance and risk analytics software that caters to the financial services industry.
Daniel Britton
Co-Founder & Managing Director of Financial Fairy Tales
Daniel spent his early career in banking and financial services before 12 years as a teacher and school leader. Recently he has specialised as an education consultant, writer and speaker on money matters. In 2013 he was awarded National Enterprise Tutor of the Year by The Peter Jones Foundation. At the Financial Fairy Tales we have a passion for empowering young people to develop their self esteem, raise their aspirations and gain awareness of their unlimited potential. Key lesson which are all too often missing from many schools.
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About Financial Fairy Tales: Financial Fairy Tales empowers children through financial literacy, enterprise awareness, and personal development solutions.
Carl-Petter Halvorsen
Managing Director of equityfor
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About equityfor: Re inventing Venture Capital Investment. Providing investment access for institutional and accredited investors.
Anne Morris
Managing Director of Working Status
Anne has worked in immigration for over 20 years, starting her career in the Home Office. She is a qualified solicitor, and has worked at a number of top immigration firms in the UK. Through Working Status, Anne advises organisations on Right to Work, and providing innovative strategic solutions to what is a core business problem.
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About Working Status: Working Status provides compliance software and document scanning solutions, enables financial services, property and FinTech firms.
Rikard Hjelm
Managing Director of Nordkap
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About Nordkap: Nordkap is a cloud-based treasury platform.
Ben McSweeney
Managing Director – UK of ZipZap
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About ZipZap: ZipZap is a technology platform for moving money around the world.
William Wright
Founder and Managing Director of New Financial LLP
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About New Financial LLP: New Financial is a new think tank and forum that makes the positive case for capital markets .
William Wright
Founder and Managing Director of New Financial LLP
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About New Financial LLP: New Financial is a new think tank and forum that makes the positive case for capital markets .
Atuksha Poonwassie
Managing Director and Co-Founder of Simple Crowdfunding
Atuksha has been involved in Peer to Peer Lending and Crowdfunding since 2013. She is a Director of the UK Crowdfunding Association, and regularly engages with policymakers and Government to advance this marketplace for all sectors in the UK. Atuksha is also the 2017 national Venus ‘Influential Woman of the Year’ award winner and is recognised in the P2P Finance News’ 2020 and 2021 Power 50, making the top 10 cut. This list highlights the 50 most influential people in P2P. Being a firm believer in building a strong community and customer base, Atuksha uses her expertise to help property professionals raise finance, build a crowd, and stand out in the market, whilst providing better access to the UK property market to everyone.
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About Simple Crowdfunding: Simple Crowdfunding is a regulated peer to peer lending and crowdfunding platform, offering property finance.
Steve Clarke
Managing Director of FinTech Connect
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About FinTech Connect: FinTech Connect is a free global network offering for the fintech industry, hosting live events, a connection portal, and original content.
Steve Clarke
Managing Director of FinTech Connect
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About FinTech Connect: FinTech Connect is a free global network offering for the fintech industry, hosting live events, a connection portal, and original content.
