Investments aren’t working

Dave Harvey

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...

Hugo Thorman

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.

Ruth Handcock

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.”

David Ferguson

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.

Adam Jones

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.

Alex Henderson

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.

Jack Cullis

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.

Kirsty Lynagh

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.