WealthBriefing Operational Strategy Summit – London, 2015

Alessandro is a Founder of Finantix. As Strategy Director, he focuses on the company’s growth and long-term product direction.

Alessandro has worked in product development and was responsible for large implementations of the company's wealth management solution at Tier 1 banks.

Before establishing Finantix, he was a consultant specialising in the areas of process management, collaboration and CRM.

Alessandro studied philosophy and Artificial Intelligence (at the time of the first wave of AI) at both UCLA (Los Angeles) and LMU (Munich). He has a passion for financial technologies, languages and history.

Duncan Ash is responsible for financial services market development at Qlik, which covers retail banking, insurance and capital markets. Duncan draws on 18 years’ experience of designing and delivering solutions for industry challenges such as risk management, customer analytics, expense management, and sales performance.

Prior to joining Qlik, he worked for SAS as industry manager for UK financial services. He worked on a number of solutions using predictive analysis - such as when building marketing propensity models - and some were real-time, including a solution for card-fraud detection at a global bank, as well as a new solution for real-time market risk.

Previously, Duncan worked for Sybase where he led financial services strategy and business development within EMEA. Again, Duncan focussed on analytics and business intelligence.

Emma is a managing associate in the financial services and funds practice and was admitted in 1991. She advises on all aspects of regulation under financial services legislation and her client base includes UK, European and international firms. Her main areas of focus are advising on structure of business to obtain the best financial regulatory treatment, the scope of the authorisation requirement under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 and helping clients to obtain authorisation, drafting client take-on documentation and advising on compliance with regulatory requirements.
She advises clients in all parts of the financial sector. A large part of her practice involves advising clients on policies and procedures to counter financial crime. She advises regulated and unregulated firms on anti-money laundering requirements, the financial sanctions regime and the prevention of bribery and corruption.

In his role as managing director of Wealthmonitor (part of the Mergermarket Group) Florian, together with a skilled team of product experts as well as sales, marketing and training professionals, is leading the relationships and interactions between customers, partners and Wealthmonitor to create sustainable value and engagement across the financial, luxury and not-for-profit sectors in order to support the business. In addition, Florian recently took over the reins as head of operations for Mergermarket Group’s EMEA Infinata team.

Prior to joining Wealthmonitor in 2007, Florian gained extensive industry experience, having worked for the financial service practice at Holborn-based corporate executive board, as well as a competitive intelligence analyst at Siemens.

Gary has over 15 years’ experience in the financial technology arena, encompassing sales, sales management and general management roles in software vendors around the world. A domain expert in the wealth management industry, Gary started his career as a European sales executive for Microbank software. Over a period of seven years he helped build the European business into a substantial operation with several European offices. He ran Microbank’s continental European business in Paris before the company was successfully sold to SunGard. Following Microbank Gary held several senior sales management and directorships at Netik, Reuters and DSTi before finally becoming managing director of Financial Objects' wealth management division. In 2007 Gary co-founded Third Financial Software and in 2012 sold his stake in TFS to start his own venture. Gary is a co-founder and shareholder in Wealth Dynamix.

Ian is an experienced board and executive advisor/partner to wealth and asset managers; family offices, software firms and fin-techs helping to achieve and accelerate their path to be future ready and well positioned ahead of the next wave of industry and competitive disruption. Ian provides industry, strategic, client centric and modern technology assessment, focus and implementation insights, drawing on my extensive network and wide-ranging business and technology model approaches and change experience to optimise growth, resilience and performance. Ian is recognised as a trusted advisor, having supported a range of firms both as an independent advisor, partner and as an executive of major technology and business consulting brands including EY,IBM, PwC and Orbium ,a software platform integrator, sold to Accenture in 2019 where he then held a wider European wealth industry business and technology transformation advisor role across key markets and clients, until 2023, when he became an independent board advisor and partner.

James Howell leads Accenture’s UK wealth management practice. He has worked across the UK, Europe and the US to design and deliver new business and operating models to banking and investment management clients. Most recently he has focused on digital transformation, including new client and advisor platforms and introducing robotics into firms’ operations. Prior to Accenture, James worked for a number of investment managers.

John has been at the helm of JHC for over 10 years. A computer science graduate from Imperial College, John was one of the original authors of the FIGARO system and has been at JHC since its foundation. John has promoted FIGARO as a solution to stockbrokers and wealth managers for over 20 years and this unique combination of business and technical skills has enabled him to guide JHC through a period of sustained growth. John is the chairman of the JHC management committee and he oversees the sales and marketing functions.

Mark joined Barclays Wealth and Investment Management in January 2015. As chief operating officer he is responsible for ensuring consistency and efficiency for operations and technology. Previously, Mark was head of operations for retail and business banking, and Barclaycard operations, and head of operations for corporate banking. Before joining Barclays, Mark worked for JP Morgan and Accenture.

Mark's team provides advice and support predominantly to clients in the wealth management and private banking sector. He has 16 years of experience in the financial services industry. Mark has held the MLRO (CF11) role for several institutions and has been head of compliance (CF10) in the UK for Emirates NBD and Kleinwort Benson. Mark has also worked in compliance for UBS Wealth Management, focusing on anti-money laundering in London, Zurich and other financial centres. He has experience of UK, EU and US regulations, in particular their application to the wealth management industry and has a strong commercial focus and understanding of the wealth management sector. In addition to his work in-house, Mark has provided training and consulting to a number of brokers, banks, accountancy and law firms and has a deep interest in financial crime, suitability and governance matters.

Mike is advisor to families, venture capital houses, start-up and growth business (as Board Adviser/NED). He is an investor, Co-Founder and formerly group chief operating officer of wealth manager and multi-family office Artorius. Mike was the architect behind the model that delivers a multi-jurisdictional client-centric wealth-planning proposition. Mike was previously a partner at accountancy firms RSM and Baker Tilly. Prior to this he has years’ experience in financial services and banking with KPMG, Santander and UK mutual societies. He also helped found a Saudi family office and managed a substantial private equity portfolio.

Paco Hauser is responsible for delivering projects to the client base. Paco has over 20 years of international experience in the financial services, the IT and the management consulting industry. He has a background in strategy, operational excellence, business-IT alignment, business process management, business transformation and all aspects of IT including sourcing.

Verona’s track record spans more than two decades, three continents, major organisations such as Legal & General, American Express and BT Financial, and the complexities of wraps, platforms, as well as associated products and tools. She has settled in the UK due to its variable climate and ever changing financial services landscape.

Verona joined 7IM from the UK’s largest platform, Cofunds. As Head of Platform she leads sales, relationship management and service for the 7IM platform. Since platforms are how people invest, Verona is passionate about getting people excited about investing, or if not excited, at least doing it.