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 CTO’ operating in the Finance space. If you think a CTO’ 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.
Guy Farley
Co-Founder and CTO of Bought By Many
Guy is the author of the first-generation technology used by Bought by Many. He now steers the tech ship in the right direction. Outside the office, he’s a devoted father of two and is looking forward to sharing his passion for sailing, climbing and skiing with his kids once they’re old enough.
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About Bought By Many: Bought By Many is a pet InsurTech company that provides insurance products and a streamlined customer experience.
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Steve Lane
Chief Technology Officer of The Access Group
Steve has nearly 25 years’ experience in the software industry. He most recently worked with Achilles, where he was responsible for setting strategy and delivering SaaS platforms through global product development and technology teams. Prior to this, he held board and senior level positions with Experian Decision Analytics, Fair Isaac and Financial Objects.
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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.
Michael Ashford
Chief Technology Officer of Wealthify
Michael Ashford is the Chief Technology Officer at Wealthify.
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About Wealthify: Wealthify offers effortless, transparent, and affordable investing for everyone.
Arno Robbertse
Chief Technology Officer of C5 Capital
Arno has over a decade of experience in managing and delivering cyber security engagements for global organisations. He routinely briefs boards on strategic cyber threats and has led information leak and hacking investigations globally for publicly-listed and large multinational companies. He also regularly advises private client and family offices on matters of cyber security and privacy. Arno also leads the Cyber Advisory consulting practice at ITC Secure, a C5 portfolio company. He is a Certified Chief Information Security Officer (CCISO), Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and is Certified in Risk & Information Systems Control (CRISC).
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About C5 Capital: C5 is a specialist technology investment firm that invests in cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, data analytics, energy and space.
Martin Boyle
CTO of Nationwide Building Society
Martin Boyle is a Chief Transformation Officer at Nationwide Building Society.
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About Metro Bank, Nationwide Building Society: Nationwide Building Society is a British mutual financial institution and the largest building society in the UK.
Yury Hushchyn
CTO of Capital.Com
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About Capital.Com: Capital.com is a high-growth, investment trading fintech group of companies empowering people to participate in financial markets.
David Goate
CTO of Marshmallow
David Goaté is Co Founder & CTO at Marshmallow.
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About Marshmallow: Marshmallow is a full-stack insurance carrier driven by technology.
Chris Greeno
Chief Technology Officer of Cuvva
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About Cuvva: Radically better insurance, fit for the future.
Alistair Stead
CTO of Oodle Car Finance
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About Oodle Car Finance: Oodle Car Finance is a car finance company that match-makes customers with UK’s best car dealers.
Vlad Cealicu
CTO and Co-Founder of CryptoCompare.com
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About CryptoCompare.com: We bring you all the data in the world of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Blockchain in an easily digestible value added format.
Richard Brown
Chief Technology Officer of R3
Richard is the Chief Technology Officer at R3 and is one of the world’s leading authorities on distributed ledger systems and architectures. Previously, Richard was the Executive Architect for Banking and Financial Markets industry innovation at IBM UK. His previous roles with the company, for whom he worked for almost fifteen years, included Lead Account Architect for a global Investment Banking client and a consultant for IBM software products. Richard is a Chartered Engineer, holds an MBA with distinction from Warwick Business School and a first-class degree in Mathematics from Trinity College, Cambridge.
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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.
Hector Wilkerson
Chief Technology Officer of LATOKEN
Hector Wilkerson is the Chief Technology Officer at LATOKEN.
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About LATOKEN: LATOKEN is the leading platform for multi-asset tokenization and cryptocurrency exchange.
Tuomas Hietanen
Co-Founder and CTO of Fund Ourselves
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About Fund Ourselves: Short-term credit from the people to the people.
George Dunning
CTO & Co Founder of Bud
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About Bud: Bud is a financial network combining APIs & data to create a new species of connected experiences.
Simon Needham
CTO of Tradeteq
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About Tradeteq: The global hub for trade finance distribution
David Bujan-Tome
Chief Technology Officer of Coinfloor
David joined Coinfloor in January 2018 and leads the team responsible for the development and stability of Coinfloor’s trading platforms. David brings a depth of experience in financial services technology, with more than 20 years experience in institutions such as Morgan Stanley, RBS, Merrill Lynch and Barclays.
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About Coinfloor: Coinfloor is an established group of cryptocurrency exchanges for institutional or sophisticated investors and traders.
Gaurav Rana
Chief Technology Officer of BABB
Gaurav is an experienced CTO and an industry veteran in the blockchain space with a history of working with distributed systems and financial services at scale. He has contributed to dozens of pivotal projects and seminal literature, and invented pioneering technology in the industry since 2010. Gaurav is a techstars alum, and ex CTO of startups Everledger and Atlas.
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About BABB: BABB is a world bank for the micro-economy: a global marketplace for human innovation, financial autonomy and wealth creation.
Adrian King
CTO of Pollen Street Capital
Adrian is a CTO with over 15 years’ experience in the Financial Services sector. Prior to joining the Pollen Street team Adrian worked for a number of organisations to develop their technology and operations functions, and most recently with 118 118 on their entry to the UK Consumer Lending market. Adrian holds a degree in Chemistry from the University of Cambridge and went on to complete a masters’ degree in computational chemistry.
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About Pollen Street Capital: Pollen Street Capital is an independent alternative investment manager, focused on investing in the financial and business services sectors
Jonathan Lister
CTO of PensionBee
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About PensionBee: PensionBee: the clever way to find and combine all your old pension plans in one good-value, online plan Capital at risk.
Nick Towers
CTO & Head of Engineering of Gro
Nick Towers is the CTO and Head of Engineering at Gro.
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About Gro: Gro develops protocols or autonomous programs designed for a simple and friendly DeFi experience.
Tom Reay
CTO of Flux Systems
Experienced Java developer with the drive to learn new technologies and languages quickly. Always playing an active part in improving the quality of a code base as well as finding better processes and practises, for example being an advocate of continuous delivery.
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About Flux Systems: Flux Systems develops software platform that keeps a track of payment receipts by automatically linking them to payment cards.
Ben Smith
Co Founder, Partner & CTO of InReach Ventures
Ben Smith is a Co-Founder and Technology Partner at InReach Ventures. He is a former UK Engineering Director at Yammer / Microsoft. Prior to that, Ben Smith served as the Head of Technology at Top10 and Chief Technology Officer at MetaBroadcast. He is building a technology platform to transform traditional Venture Capital.
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About InReach Ventures: The AI powered VC focused on early-stage European startups
Sarah Greasley
CTO 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.
Konstantinos Faliagkas
Co-founder & CTO of Wealthyhood
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About Daedalus investment Platform, Wealthyhood: The first DIY wealth-building app for long-term investors.
Mike Moate
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer of Countingup
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About Countingup: The one that does your books. Countingup is the UK’s #1 banking & accounting app. Dead easy. Super fast. Self sorting.
Dave Tonge
Chief Technology Officer of Moneyhub
Dave is the CTO of Moneyhub, developing an intelligent financial data and payments platform. He is involved in standards work across the OpenID Foundation, IETF, ISO and Open Banking UK – with a particular interest in security profiles and “decoupled” authorisation flows. He is a co-chair of the Financial API Working Group at the OpenID Foundation.
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About Moneyhub: Moneyhub is a data and payments fintech that provides open banking, open finance, and open data solutions.
Vincent Audoire
Co-Founder, CTO of Feather
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About Feather: Popsure specializes in giving personalized insurance advice.
Mark Akerman
CTO of Oplo
Mark Akerman is the Chief Technology Officer at Oplo.
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About Oplo: Oplo is a direct lender platform that offers car finance, personal loans, and secured loan products.
Ian Fuller
CTO & Cofounder of Freetrade
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About Freetrade: Freetrade is a challenger stockbroker that offers free share trading in mobile phones.
Guy Evans
CTO of Koyo
Experienced hands-on CTO/VP Engineering
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About Koyo: Koyo uses machine learning to serve customers with competitively priced credit
Antonio Marino
Co-Founder & CTO of Emma
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About Emma: Emma is a financial app advocate that helps users avoid overdrafts, find wasteful subscriptions, and allows users control of their finances.
Mitch Ebdon
CTO of essDOCS
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About essDOCS: essDOCS enables paperless trade; focusing on digitizing paper-heavy shipping, trade and logistic processes.
Joe Barbour
Chief Technology Officer of Knoma
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About Knoma: Knoma offers a payment solution and marketplace for lifelong learning.
Gabriele Cacciola
CTO of Ocyan
Gabriele has engineering in his DNA: focused and visionary about tech. His experience as Big Data in the Fintech space with ClearScore (since they were a small startup to the worldwide scale it is now) followed many years spent in high tech startups and corporates. When is not busy directing Ocyan’s tech work, he works along with AWS to present his Big Data serverless platforms and support other startups in this journey.
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About Ocyan: Financial marketplace for European Expats
Pearl Arbenser-Simmonds
CTO of Agily
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About Agily: Agily is a collaborative and team goal management app improving organisational alignment, business agility and competitiveness.
Nick Buller
Chief Technology Officer of ThinCats
Nick’s entrepreneurial spirit, developed at the helm of several London based start-ups, is coupled with a direct appreciation of how investment in technology can transform businesses. This has driven him to ThinCats, where he is able to use this first-hand experience to help facilitate the funding of UK SMEs. Nick is responsible for overseeing technological advancement at ThinCats; spearheading innovation, building infrastructure, maximising security and promoting development across the business. He has vast experience in finance and technology; having spent over 10 years at Barclays at Director level, he has held CTO positions at a number of other London-based technology firms, as well as CTO for ESF Capital.
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About ThinCats: ThinCats is an alternative finance provider dedicated to funding growing and ambitious mid-sized SMEs across the UK.
Charlie Barker
CTO of Blue Motor Finance
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About Blue Motor Finance: Blue is one of the UK’s premier consumer motor finance companies, lending over £750m to over 80,000 customers.
Richard Gissing
Founder and CTO of MDX Technology
Richard was the founding partner at Gissing Consulting in 1991 (which became Gissing Software), which supplied market data software solutions to the financial markets. Richard has over 20 years’ experience of technology for the financial markets, with particular emphasis on market data and trading gateways. His experience, knowledge and understanding of both the business and technology of the financial markets allow him to interpret business requirements and translate these into a technical solution. In addition to providing product and strategic technology direction, one of Richard’s key strengths is in technical support of the sales process. Gissing Software was sold to Reuters in 2008. Richard co-founded MDX Technology in 2010.
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About MDX Technology: MDX Technology Ltd focuses on real-time market data connectivity solutions for Traders, Developers and Market Data Professionals.
Rob Parker
Chief Technology Officer of Oxygen Finance
Rob Parker joined the Oxygen team in 2016 as Development Manager, where he was quickly promoted to Chief Technology Officer. Before Oxygen, Rob spent three years at iForce where he re-platformed a high-availability, high-throughput carrier selection product to enable iForce to become a SAAS provider, whilst growing a technology hub in the midlands. Rob has also Setup a small fin-tech start-up as Technical Director, creating case management products for the reclaim industry. Rob brings to Oxygen his expertise working in several industries delivering high quality and high availability technology solutions, whilst leading teams across four continents to work with clients globally.
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About Oxygen Finance: Oxygen Finance brings innovation to early payment solutions, generating a new source of income for companies
Miguel Castro
CTO & Co-Founder of Telleroo
CTO & Co-Founder at Telleroo.
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About Telleroo: Telleroo is one unified way for accountants & bookkeepers to make payments on behalf of clients
Christophe Monget
CTO and Founder of MatchPlace Limited
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About MatchPlace Limited: New generation Fintech platform. Integrating Financial Services solutions, bridging the gap between Financial Institutions and SMEs
Andrew Easter
CTO of Claimer
Andrew Easter serves as the Chief Technology Officer at Claimer.
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About Claimer: Quick and simple R&D tax relief claims for UK startups
Sam Hopkins
CTO/Co-Founder of Tapoly on demand insurance
Having been involved in the software engineering industry for over 20 years, within both start-ups and established companies, Sam’s professional experience covers finance, file systems, databases, kernel programming, websites, encryption, UI, and 3D graphics. Sam designs systems with the future in mind, keeping things simple yet flexible so they can be adapted to follow the evolution of the business they support. His knowledge, skills and vision help create the Tapoly you see today.
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About Tapoly on demand insurance: On demand insurance for freelancers, contractors and SMEs, and everyone else in the sharing economy and the gig economy.
Benjamin King
Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Tumelo
Benjamin King is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer 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.
Panos Savvas
Co-Founder and CTO of Akoni Hub
Panos has extensive retail and commercial banking expertise. With over 13 years in Banking and Fintech, he has been leading global product development teams and change management programmes for leading financial organisations including RBS, IG Group, Intelligent Environments and others. Panos has worked with a wide range of Fintech and e-commerce ventures, providing consultancy on tech strategy and product/service design. Panos holds a BSc Computer Science, an MSc Distributed Systems and an Executive MBA from London Business School.
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About Akoni Hub: Akoni provides simple cash management tools for individuals and SMEs.
Mohamed Brahim
Chief Technology Officer of Profile Pensions
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About Profile Pensions: Our pension experts track down your pensions and tell you how we can make you better off in retirement.
Rudolph Graan
Founder & CTO of Expend
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About Expend: Expend is the expense management and company spending platform.
Cormac Scanlan
CTO (Chief Technology Officer) of Fleximize
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About Fleximize: Fleximize is a fintech-led business finance provider offering business loans of up to £500,000 to UK-based SMEs
Michael Arnaldi
CTO and Founder of CreditSCRIPT
Michael Arnaldi is CTO of CreditSCRIPT. He has been active in the fin-tech industry for the past 5 years and has a strong background on full-stack development in the field of scalable and highly available financial applications. His personal goal is to improve the financial industry and he is also co-founder and CTO of MyMonexEx a London-based Blockchain-focused platform. Michael is enrolled in Computer Science faculty, University of Pisa.
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About CreditSCRIPT, MATECHS: CreditSCRIPT is an alternative credit investment platform that helps professional investors assess loans and portfolios.
Martin Paton
CTO, and Cloud & Platform Engineering leader of Kin and Carta
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About Kin and Carta: Kin + Carta is a global digital transformation business that advises, creates, and connects marketing and customer experience.
Andrew Pickett
Co-Founder and CTO of ShareIn
Andrew has been pioneering web technology at startups since 2000. He benefits from combining his software development expertise with an excellent business background.
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About ShareIn: ShareIn help our clients deliver market leading direct investment channels.
Alexander Kustov
CTO of Crowd.Science
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About Crowd.Science: Crowd.Science is a crowdfunding platform that supports scientists build a community of funders for their research.
James Pursaill
Co-Founder & CTO of Plend
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About Plend: Building a better way to borrow, where people are no longer held back by their credit history
Filipe Rodriguez
CTO of CloudMargin
Filipe is a multi-skilled creative technology leader, with a solid background in development and extensive experience across various business sectors. He has built agile teams with a strong customer focus which always deliver.
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About CloudMargin: CloudMarginwas is the cloud-based collateral management solution.
Tim Shields
Chief Technology Officer of Money Dashboard
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About Money Dashboard: Money Dashboard is an online personal financial management service allowing users to view their online financial accounts.
Tim Shields
Chief Technology Officer of Money Dashboard
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About Money Dashboard: Money Dashboard is an online personal financial management service allowing users to view their online financial accounts.
Shrenik Patel
Co-Founder & CTO of Moneyjar
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About Moneyjar: Moneyjar is an online financial ecosystem that provides sophisticated investment advice and seamless transactional platforms at scale.
Hugh Nimmo-Smith
Co-founder and CTO of Onedox
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About Onedox, Onedox: Onedox is a free, secure service that enables UK consumers to take control of their household bills
Nick Gains
CTO of Huddlestock
Nick Gains is Chief Technology Officer of Huddlestock.
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About Huddlestock: SaaS, Fintech, Mobile App, Wealth Management, Asset Management, Trading, Investing
Colin Tanner
CTO of DigiSEq
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About DigiSEq: DigiSEq is an innovative global FinTech company providing Programme Managers, Issuers or NFC wearable manufacturers.
Huw Jenkins
CTO/co-Founder/Owner of The Money Cloud
Huw Jenkins is the CTO and co-founder of The Money Cloud Ltd.
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About The Money Cloud: We’re an API driven platform that offers comparison, registration and execution from multiple payment providers when sending money overseas
