Investments aren’t working

Our sector is being held back by old tech, dismal processes and misaligned interests. Together they create pointless complexity for financial planning and investment professionals, and provide outdated, overpriced experiences for customers.

It’s our mission to change all that.

Graphic of person working on a computer

Our purpose

We build technology that helps more people to invest – and invest well.

Our engineering allows forward-thinking firms to remove the hassle, lower the cost and improve the overall experience of investing – empowering more people to invest and be treated well.

Our operating principles

We aspire to be fantastically easy to work with

We want our customers to love working with us. It takes a committed culture, backed up by a series of non-negotiable operating principles that define how we work…

  1. Never settle
    We think of ourselves as ‘embedded hero-makers’ for our customers. We put them first, and if we say we’ll do something, we’ll move heaven earth to do it. We think boldly and embrace change.
  2. Take ownership
    We think rigorously and deeply about a problem, then charge at it – acting with and urgency and speed that sets us apart. But we never lose sight on quality or long-term scalability.
  3. Be generous and candid
    We encourage our people – and our customers – to challenge us and never shy away from tough conversations. We have a flat and inclusive culture where everyone can be themselves – and speak up.

Our founders and leadership team

Decades of disruptive experience

Photo of Dave Harvey

Dave Harvey

Founder

Dave Harvey

Founder

Dave has extensive knowledge of stockbroking, trading, settlement and custody administration systems, from previous roles at Ascentric, Société Generale and Royal Bank of Scotland. His experience with existing software models led him to conclude that he could dramatically improve upon current solutions through innovative architecture, APIs and serverless technology...

Photo of Hugo Thorman

Hugo Thorman

Founder

Hugo Thorman

Founder

Hugo built and developed the Ascentric/IFDL investment platform, building it to £9.8bn of assets on completion of its sale to Royal London. Prior to that Hugo was CEO of James Hay, and Director of Life and Pension products at Abbey National. Hugo has a degree in Economics from the University of Nottingham and an MBA from the London Business School.

Photo of Ruth Handcock

Ruth Handcock

Chair

Ruth Handcock

Chair

Ruth is the former CEO of Octopus Investments and chair of Seccl. So far in her career, she’s had fourteen jobs: newspaper deliverer, car washer, checkout operative, factory salad chopper (night shift), receptionist, lab technician, editor, consultant, government adviser, COO, finance director, chief of staff, head of customer and CEO.

She’s now working in a new role that will see her lead the Octopus drive to help more people get access to help with their money… but is very happy to know that whatever Octopus throws at her, she doesn’t have to worry about chopping off her thumb at 3am.

“I love that at Octopus every day is completely different. We have big ambitions to change the industry we work in and invest into sectors that have a huge impact on the world we live in. That will take a lot of work, but it’s exactly the kind of challenge I relish.”

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David Ferguson

Chief executive officer (CEO)

David Ferguson

Chief executive officer (CEO)

David joined Seccl as CEO in April 2022. He has overall accountability for the company’s strategic direction: it’s his job to make sure that we deliver on our collective ambition and market opportunity.

He was previously founder and CEO of Nucleus, where he created a distinctive and customer-led culture that helped the investment platform to grow from start-up to £20bn in AUA when he departed.

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Adam Jones

Chief technology officer (CTO)

Adam Jones

Chief technology officer (CTO)

Adam is responsible for shaping our future product and technology vision. What we build, why we build it and how we build it are all in his remit, with executive accountability for all aspects of the company’s product, engineering, data and IT Ops.

He joined in October 2022 from investment consultancy Redington, where he served as CTO and executive director, as well as managing director of Ada Fintech, the firm’s portfolio management, research and governance business. Prior to Redington, Adam spent five years at Altus (most recently as head of innovation) and FNZ.

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Alex Henderson

Chief risk officer (CRO)

Alex Henderson

Chief risk officer (CRO)

Alex holds executive responsibility for Seccl’s risk and compliance functions, ensuring the business is organised to continue to meet its regulatory obligations – and perform robust risk management practices as it grows.

She joined in January 2023, having spent twenty years performing risk, external audit and finance roles within financial services.

Her last nine years were with Virgin Money, where she was part of the risk leadership team in various senior risk positions such as head of risk governance, reporting & frameworks, head of operational risk, head of prudential risk, and latterly as head of capital management in finance.

Prior to Virgin Money, Alex held credit risk management positions in Royal Bank of Scotland, after training for her chartered accountancy qualification with Deloitte.

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Jack Cullis

Chief financial officer (CFO)

Jack Cullis

Chief financial officer (CFO)

Jack is one of Seccl’s longest- serving employees, having joined the company in January 2018 as head of finance, before subsequently being promoted to CFO. He holds executive responsibility for the financial management of the company.

He began his career in a chartered accountancy practice, before moving to financial services in 2007 when he joined adviser platform Ascentric.

He spent 11 years at the company, supporting its growth from 25 employees and under £500m of assets, to over 300 employees and more than £14 billion – initially as management accountant, then financial controller and finally finance manager.

Photo of Kirsty Lynagh

Kirsty Lynagh

Chief people and performance officer (CPPO)

Kirsty Lynagh

Chief people and performance officer (CPPO)

Kirsty is responsible for cultivating a high- performance culture here at Seccl, and holds executive accountability for executive performance, people, communications and proposition. She joined in June 2022.

Kirsty’s human centric yet first principles approach has been shaped over twenty years, during which she has adopted non-traditional methods to delivering people strategies that enable inclusive, engaged and performing workplaces.

She worked with Dave Ferguson at Nucleus, where she spent seven years as chief people officer there.

Our backer

Backed by an eight-legged unicorn

In September 2019, while still pre-market, Seccl was acquired by Octopus – the £12.5 billion group that’s on a mission to breathe new life into broken industries, through companies like Octopus Energy, Octopus Investments and Octopus Ventures.

On a mission to invest in the people, ideas and industries that will change the world, Octopus continues to support our growth as a fully-aligned shareholder, with a shared ambition to disrupt broken industries.

How it started

Our origin story

Dave Harvey Dave Harvey

Founder

I started Seccl after a period of reflection in my own career. I’d worked in financial technology for many years, at big institutions like Société Generale and Ascentric (which is where I met Hugo).

And it had made me convinced that change was desperately needed. Existing technology was outdated. It struggled to adapt to a changing environment, had inefficiency baked into its core and, ultimately, only led to bad (and expensive) outcomes for end consumers.

It needed a total rethink. And I quickly worked out that the only way to do that would be to start with a blank sheet of paper – leaving all legacy assumptions, beliefs and baggage at the door.

And so that’s what I did. I set about redesigning the architecture of investment technology from my shed. The rest is history…

After working together for several years, I bumped into Dave at my own leaving party – where he told me all about what he was building in his garden shed.

The idea grew on me as I realised how much time, effort and cost was wasted in the process of getting a client to a point where they had the right tax wrappers invested in the right assets. Dave had the answer.

He was the gifted engineer who needed money and customers to make his dream work... that was something I could help with. Luckily he thought so too!

Hugo Thorman Hugo Thorman

Founder

How it's going

The journey so far…

16
June 2016

Seccl incorporated and seed fund raised

18
July 2018

FCA permissions granted

19
September 2019

acquired by Octopus

19
December 2019

named ‘Disruptor of the Year’ by the lang cat

20
August 2020

moved into our Manvers Street HQ in Bath

21
November 2021

certified as a ‘Great Place to Work’

22
April 2022

Dave Ferguson joined as CEO

22
September 2022

launched our accumulation pension and led fastest ever migration

23
July 2023

launched fully-automated decumulation pension

Ready to begin?

Get started with Seccl today