Stealth start-up fintech

Building a stealth start-up fintech in the banking and financial services space.

Building a start-up fintech | Programme Director | Operations Director | SaaS | Blockchain

Career Break

Supporting extended family

OMNIO

Omnio Group is a Cards & Payments FinTech, also creating Banking-As-A-Service (BaaS), transitioning from start-up to scale-up.

Objective
Recruited by the CEO to enable accelerated revenue growth, and reduce programme delivery costs through better, faster delivery and leadership of a central team.

●	Full lifecycle delivery management using multi-disciplinary teams

●	Led the creation of a white-label current account, both the technology aspect and BAU operational processes including KYC, AML, compliance and support

●	Led an additional ring-fenced team of 30 people supporting key clients on highly unstable legacy platforms the pending availability of the new Omnicore platform

●	Reduced delivery costs by: facilitating uplifts in individuals performance using coaching and feedback; designing and implementing Agile methodology and governance; identifying and mitigating risks and issues early using the new methodology and reporting

●	Reduced remedial work and costs by: allocation of quality assurance resource; enhanced Sprint planning; better control of requirements documentation and Change Requests

●	Created new Change Management function, leading a team of programme and project managers, business analysts and PMO

●	Revenues accelerated by: earlier delivery rather than many months late

Results
Improved financials by over £5 million pa by mitigating the risk of lost revenues, managing key supplier relationships and accelerating new revenue growth. Reduced delivery and remedial costs by over £1.5 million pa, and mitigated programme overruns.

Program Director

The private equity investors asked me to lead a subsidiary business PCT London with a team of 30, to move key clients, suppliers and staff to the core Omnio business and then close the PCT limited company, at the same time as continuing programme delivery and business as usual operational activities.

Managing Director

Aion Digital

Aion Digital is a FinTech company creating digital banking applications across the Middle East, transitioning from start-up to scale-up.

Objective
To enable accelerated revenue growth, reduce programme delivery costs through better, faster delivery and leadership of a central team.

●	Full lifecycle program management simultaneously in 3 countries across the Middle East, using multi-disciplinary teams

●	Revenues accelerated by; earlier completion payments through delivery on time rather than typically 2 months late; better programme planning; careful management of Project Managers across Kuwait, Bahrain and Dubai

●	Delivery costs reduced by: delivering on time by designing and implementing a programme delivery framework based on Agile methodology with structured governance and oversight; facilitating an uplift in Project Manager performance through regular development reviews, feedback and coaching; creation of transparent internal and external reporting, enabling early communication of issues and remedial actions

●	Remedial work costs reduced by: control of business requirements documents and Change Requests; enhanced Sprint planning; allocation of quality assurance resource

●	Established new Delivery function leading a team of programme and project managers, business analysts and PMO

Results
Improved financials by over $5 million pa by mitigating the risk of lost revenues, managing key supplier relationships and accelerating new revenue growth. Reduced delivery and remedial costs by over $1 million pa, and mitigated programme overruns.

Transformation Director

Williams Lea

Williams Lea Tag is a global marketing and communications business.

Objective
Mitigate delivery risk by turnaround of failing GDPR programme

●	Full lifecycle programme management

●	Mixture of onshore and offshore teams

Results
Delivered 2 months ahead of plan and 42% under budget

Program Manager

Post Office Ltd

Joint venture with Bank of Ireland.

Objective
Increase revenues by the turnaround of a failing strategic programme where 4 others had failed.

●	Deployment of tablet technology and digital content to 500 strategic locations

●	Recovery of broken relationships with 3 of the 4 key IT suppliers

●	Full lifecycle programme management

●	Leadership of multi-disciplinary onshore and offshore teams

Results
Revenue increase in excess of £15 million pa.

Deloitte

Objective
Increase revenues by creating a new service following my direct approach to the UK Managing Partner with a new business idea.

●	Design and implementation of a new data analytics service

●	Full lifecycle programme management

●	Matrix organisation leading multi-disciplinary teams

●	Sale of service to key strategic clients to ensure year 1 profitability

Results
Revenues in excess of £5 million pa.

Capa

Capa is a boutique consultancy. Delivery of finance programmes at large retailers.

Some jurisdictions refer to this as Programme Manager.

MERIDIAN COST BENEFIT LIMITED

Meridian is a boutique consultancy. Delivery of finance programmes in local authorities, legal, retail, manufacturing, engineering and utilities sectors.

Project Manager

EURODEBT FINANCIAL SERVICES LIMITED

Financial Services franchise selling to personal customers.

Owner

Programme Director. I help CEOs of UK-based Fintech businesses, deliver annual revenue growth of £15m+, by leading the change and client delivery performance effectively.

Are you a CEO in FinTech or financial services and want to accelerate your revenue growth?

Do you fear the next meeting with investors and shareholders?

Are you frustrated about not being able to get the revenue performance from the assets you have?

Are you worried for your position as CEO even?

Wouldn’t it be better if your revenue growth gained the spring in its step that you keep promising?

If your meetings with investors were handshakes and not ass-kickings?

And if it came without having to throw a whole ton of budget at delivery and sales functions?

It’s because your delivery capability is not optimised, and revenues are slow to be captured. The SDLC and governance are lacking, and sub-optimal delivery decisions are made against this context.

This is good news, because it’s not expensive or radical to fix. It just needs diligent and experienced delivery leadership. Then your revenues will grow faster – happy days.

In my 15+ years’ experience I have led the delivery contribution to revenue growth of c. £15m pa, including my last two roles. That’s why a fintech former colleague said of me:

"…Strategic/critical thinking, excellent communication/articulation and strong analytical ability. He has an ability to focus on business outcomes as well as stated objectives and operates confidently at the Board level."

The same types of issues arise repeatedly – I expect them, am adept at negotiating them and have done so many times.

If you would like me to help you increase revenues by leading and optimising your Change or Delivery function, then direct message me on LinkedIn now.

Paul Meredith

🌟 FinTech friends and financial services leaders — let’s have a real chat about change. Because, honestly, it’s not just about growth anymore. Sometimes, it’s about survival. 

🌟 I’ve been in the Change & Transformation game for over 20 years now. And here’s something I’ve noticed: a lot of people talk about change like they want it — but what they really mean is they want everyone else to change. 

Funny how that works, right? The truth is, change can be scary when it means changing yourself.

Why is that?

➡️Maybe people don’t feel totally ready for what’s coming
➡️Or maybe they’re just comfortable where they are
➡️Ambiguity? It can freak people out
➡️And if someone’s been burned by messy change efforts before, why would they jump back in?

So, how do we make this less scary?

➡️Talk openly - explain the what, the why, the when, and what’s in it for them
➡️Get everyone involved early, especially those doing the day-to-day work — they know the pain points better than the exec team
➡️Tailor your communication — Board members want slides, end users want Q&As

Give the right training
➡️Keep the support going after launch
➡️And most importantly, listen. Feedback is gold for tweaking and improving

When we do change right, it sets us up for success — real success tied to actual business goals, the stuff we promised when we started the journey.

How are you embracing change in your organisation? Any lessons or tips you’ve picked up along the way? Let’s swap stories.

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Building a startup fintech. I help fintech CEOs deliver annual revenue growth of £15m+, by leading the change and client delivery function effectively

Bank of America

Process Design Consultant

HSBC

Global Process Engineering offered internal consultancy services to deliver transformational and organisational change capabilities for commercial and institutional banking teams across HSBC Group

Program: Institutional/Global Banking Frontline Simplification

Objective: To deliver cost saving or capacity release initiatives, reducing administrative burden on Global Relationship Bankers and Support staff. Targeted release of 250,000 hours p.a. across Global Banking Markets
Resources: matrix management of delivery pods from IT, policy change and external consultancy. Used Kanban delivery approach in Monday.com, and lean methods to assess new items
Spoke directly with senior stakeholders in EMEA to build programme engagement, refine issue backlogs, confirm priorities, and obtain sponsorship and signoff for implementations
Designed engagement and update packs, informing on progress, risks and issues, and deliveries in other regions 
Chaired regular governance sessions with delivery teams, resolving roadblocks, ensuring continued momentum, and capturing risks and issues for escalation
Triaged new items, and refined existing backlog to prioritise benefits against scope. Presented charters for new items to add to backlogs. Redirected out of scope items to other programmes
ratified benefit realisation sessions for implemented deliveries, ensuring accurate calculations and approval by market sponsors
Delivered own backlog of priority items, using lean and six sigma methods to implement improvements by reducing wasteful review and approval steps to time-critical processes. Smaller-scope items managed through direct team, coaching on lean six sigma approach 

Result: 
> £400,000 in capacity release into EMEA markets, with wider benefits of over £5m across the Group
Mitigated potential delivery risk and budgetary reductions of over £2m
> £200,000 in savings through direct efforts
> £50,000 in capacity release via mentees

Senior Manager/Associate Director, Global Wholesale Process Reengineering

Program: Global KYC (Know Your Customer) Transformation 

Objective: To deliver cost savings through process improvements, journey redesign and 
Designed a future state and transition plan to enable a KYC transformation programme to realise a 40% automation objective.
Recruited external design and process experts, and ran multiple scrum pods to analyse in-scope markets' KYC activities, identify variances and workshop potential solutions. Identified potential savings from removing waste steps in data-gathering stages, and implemented tactical improvements into global operations teams.
Developed agile ways of working to align process, CX, UX, data and IT development teams, creating a systematic flow of outputs and artefacts and generate momentum in the programme.
Brought together a cross-functional team of process and product owners to design end-end process flows, to revitalise a stalling delivery programme and launch a new markets and securities product to corporate customers.

Result: 
Enabled programme to realise over £20m in operating cost savings 
Delivered 10% reduction in turnaround times, over £2m p.a.
Mitigated delivery risk for a $150m transformation programme
Removed duplicated effort in existing processes, improving turnaround times for onboarding by over 2 weeks, and enabled programme to regain traction and meet launch deadline

Retail banking product team owning deposit accounts, overdrafts, payments and FX, with responsibility for ensuring effective strategies and change activities are fully realised in line with UK retail objectives

Objective: Grow revenue and manage operating costs in line with strategic objectives and annual targets for UK retail transaction banking products
Developed reporting and oversight framework in collaboration with risk management team to ensure effective scrutiny of product owners in meeting annual operating plans, by providing Senior leadership with clear summaries on performance and forecasts
Built MI and reporting framework to generate quality data and insights made available to product owners, creating close relationships with product and analytics teams
Reviewed existing direct costs arrangements and forecasting model, resolving data issues, clarifying cost centres, and closing redundant third-party agreements
Implemented a value stream framework into product teams, aligning annual change submissions by customer outcomes and strategic priorities
Created new deposit balance tracking models and reporting packs, in response to revenue headwinds by identifying golden sources, agreeing definitions with Finance and Product owners, and publishing onto Qlikview to allow teams to easily access data.

Result: 
Transactional banking products met growth and retention target of over 2% net growth
Increase turnaround time by half, and transactional banking products met growth and retention target of over 2% net growth
10% reduction in annual department budget 
Improved ROI on a $75m change portfolio, driving over $100m in revenue and cost benefits
Treasury and Finance teams able to hedge more effectively and generate over £50m in additional revenue

Product Manager, Everyday Banking, UK Retail

Owned customer growth strategy. Collaborated with retail product and wider proposition team to develop engagement, acquisition and retention initiatives to capture market share of retail customer base, developing products and services aligned to customer wants and needs

Objective: Grow revenue and reduce operating costs by deepening share of wallet in priority customer segments and digital channels

Defined strategy to drive growth and long-term relationships, focussing on mass-affluent customers and their families. Compared market offerings across transactional banking products and collaborated with product and channel owners to refine market acquisition and retention strategies.
Programme manager for customer communications transformation, with workstreams driving document digitisation, digital channel growth and customer engagement. Recruited PM, legal and risk experts to advise on approach and ensure proper documentation, control and compliance of workstreams
Redesigned notification and follow up processes for customer documents, tracking flow of instructions through 4 internal systems. Improved customer sentiment from ease of use, and ensured priority documents were placed in customers’ hands
Developed improved customer tracking and forecasting models, to support deep dives into retail customer activity and grow share of wallet. Defined golden sources with analytics, creating granular tracking across 4 propositions. Collaborated with product owners to focus on retention of target customer groups, and exit or deepen relationships customer base with dormant status or low-value products

Result: 
Increased wallet share across deposit and lending products and delivered 5% growth in 3 years
Realised over £4m in cost savings and 1 million new mobile banking registrations
High risk finding mitigated, creating cost avoidance of > £250k p.a
Over 3% net customer growth over 3 years, driving product penetration by over 2%

Oversight of UK retail sales across 4 brands and 5 channels, and production of monthly ExCo performance scorecard ahead of UK global executive committee meetings 

Objective: ensure sustainable, regulatory-compliant revenue growth for UK retail.

Managed UK retail performance scorecard on behalf of COO for CEO of UK retail, agreeing metric owners and golden data sources
Prepared external investor performance packs in collaboration with Group Strategy and external comms leads

Result: 
Improved data quality of over 50 metrics outlining UK business performance, reducing rework and action plans by over 80%
Created high quality, accurate presentations available at annual investor day calls, discussing revenue performance in excess of £10bn p.a

Business Performance Manager, UK Retail COO

Provision of change management, implementation and process improvement services, into retail and commercial banking products and processes, on behalf of UK Bank, across sites in UK, India and China. 

Objective: reduce operating costs, ensure adherence to changes in regulatory requirements, and enable revenue growth

Managed implementation and improvement team across 3 sites, coordinating a runway of over 50 projects and improvement initiatives into operations, using a mix of Lean, Six Sigma and internal project methodologies, including coaching and development of change-, time-, and stakeholder-management skills
Used lean tools and automation routines to drive improvements in loans and cards onboarding, account servicing and commercial account closures. into offshore processing teams
Closed onshore ops centres, migrating processes using automation, lean and six sigma tools to remove duplicated and paper-based process steps
Ops lead for ringfencing and other regulatory programmes, including Immigration Act, Direct Recovery of Debt, changes to ISA products and FSCS implementation
Developed BAU performance framework and reporting packs, working with control and oversight functions to drive SLA performance improvement

Result: 
Over 20% capacity increase  (£1m) into offshore processing teams
20 FTE cost savings (£150k) through automation and process simplification
Project delivery rate increased by one third over 2 years, saving over £50k p.a. in FTE costs
Avoided risk of noncompliance fines of over £1m
SLA performance increased 5% YoY across service catalogue

Lead Operational Performance Manger, Banking Operations

Systems Manager, Southampton:
Implementation and management of all change and BAU activities impacting to Wealth systems and Office applications across UK and India

Objective: Limit operating costs and mitigate operational and conduct risk through oversight and delivery of control frameworks and impact assessments for regulatory, technical and migratory projects.

Migrated incident management, MI production and Information Access Management processes to single UK site, and to Global service centres, reducing onshore footprint whilst maintaining service and performance levels
Interacted with the technical teams, product owners and business champion contacts to confirm specific changes and impacts to applicable business unit/groups ahead of launch of new systems and regulatory changes
Engaged with key stakeholders within Business, Technology, Legal, Compliance, Risk, Finance and Operations teams to interpret existing and new risks and translate them into business impacts, resolving or mitigating action points through Day 2 enhancements, or refining delivery requirements to ensure critical services were not impacted

Result: 
Reduced UK footprint by half, creating over £50,000 p.a. in cost saves
Reduced dependence on MS Office-based apps by over half, reducing operational risk assessment to “moderate"
Delivered windows 7 upgrade into operational centres, ensuring readiness activities completed ahead of switchover
 

Systems Implementation Officer, Warwick:

Drafting, Scheduling, UAT, Release and Communication of system changes and enhancements to internal systems for retail investment operations
Systems SME for regulatory change programmes, including ISA changes, tax rule amendments
Resolved longstanding issue affecting rebates on customers with monthly direct debit investments. Recalculated 3 years of missing investments, rectified customer accounts and issued communications to affected customer base. Rewrote procedures and agreed process owners going forward

Various Roles, Wealth Services

I help Heads of Business at Banks reduce operating costs up to £10m by delivering effective transformation programmes.

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