“It’s always been far more than a job for me - it’s been my life. I was part of the original team that created Xplan with the vision of making financial advice simpler, more efficient and more accessible. In 2003, I was delighted to join another group of smart, forward-thinking people at Iress who share the same values and vision for what software can do in financial services.”
Over the following two decades, Andrew led through massive changes in the way people engage with financial services - from the early days on the trading room floor to the real-time buying and selling of shares in apps. On the Upfront podcast, he and his co-guest Adir Shiffman agreed that if all that change had happened in one hit, it would’ve been completely mindblowing. And, because it’s all happened so gradually, it’s easy to take for granted just how far the industry has come.
“It’s a bit like a boiling frog. Sometimes innovation is celebrated too much, and an incremental change is masked as innovation.”
As CEO of a global financial technology company, Andrew has been lucky enough to work with some of the world’s most iconic financial services brands, helping the industry overcome challenges with legacy technology, digitalise and transform. His philosophy has always been centred around the need for joined-up software to solve the problems caused by siloed ways of working - an issue he’s seen all too often.
“Separate systems and separate data stores often translate to manual experiences for the consumer, and that’s my personal frustration, my business frustration. And I can understand why it happens, but I don’t think consumers are accepting the basis for that. My encouragement to people I talk to is to open an account, open an experience with someone else and understand what good looks like to challenge the status quo. Because until you can see what's possible, it can be really hard to make a change.”