A new venture established by some of the biggest names in fintech has officially launched today at Fintech Week London. The Fintech & Payments Advisory Network (TFPA) offers real-world advice from proven operators and addresses the gap in the market where founders and executives can tap into the experience of people who have held roles like theirs and faced similar challenges around strategy and commercialisation, business expansion, operational improvement, M&A, marketing and talent acquisition. The business has operations in North America and Europe.

This team has worked across the Americas and EMEA leading high-tech financial services and payments businesses ranging in size from fledgling growth businesses to international corporations. Collectively they are responsible for raising hundreds of millions in funding, leading businesses with a few employees to five thousand, spearheading over fifty acquisitions and ten mergers and bringing over $1bn in revenue from new propositions to hundreds of clients. The group has first-hand experience across the card schemes, payment rails, acquirers, and issuers, to the big four management consultancy firms and world-leading retail banks as well as leading start-ups and scale-ups.

The global fintech industry was valued at $7.3 trillion USD in 2021 and is predicted to grow substantially over the next decade as digital transformation makes accessing financial services faster, simpler, cheaper and more inclusive. $91.5 billion was invested in the sector in 2021, representing 20% of all capital invested throughout the world. With huge flows of capital entering the sector and start-ups being founded every day, the need has arisen to leverage the experience of seasoned entrepreneurs, investors, change-makers and top executives who have faced similar challenges. TFPA was formed to deliver this in a structured, growth-focused way.

Before the official launch, the TFPA team successfully delivered handpicked assignments across EMEA and the USA. They now plan to expand, while keeping their key differentiator: advice based on real-world experience from industry professionals.

The TFPA’s partners have significant experience in the finance, technology and payments industry at the highest level:

John De Lavis is a founder of First Direct, served as Head of Group Cards and then as Head of UK payment businesses for HSBC and Chief Product Officer for MasterCard. In the US he was COO of NetSpend and then COO for MetaBank from its development as a major US payments bank. He is a board member, advisor or investor to a number of fintechs.

Roger Bracken has held leadership positions in several international payments technology businesses; NCR, First Data and software with embedded payments scale-up, TSG. He is currently a Special Advisor at Vitruvian Partners, an investment firm, as well as advising several tech scale-up CEOs. He is chair of an early-stage fintech company, WyzePay.

Steve Wright has a long record of sales leadership in payments technology, having worked with companies such as Xerox, ACI, Fujitsu and NCR. Steve has spent the last decade working with payments startups and scale-ups, including Lusis and Alaric.

John Goodale has extensive experience within the global payments and fintech sectors, holding a number of senior sales, consulting and product leadership roles supporting a range of issuer processing, outsourcing and SaaS solutions. He has worked with TSYS, KPMG Consulting, Zwipe AS, Crosscard SA and DMR Consulting.

Roger Van Scoy has held leadership positions spanning four continents at First Data, TSYS and ACI as well as having led a fintech startup. Roger has a keen interest in Customer Success which he led from inception at ACI and has consulted with the likes of The Strawhecker Group.

Adam Wright is an entrepreneur and executive search specialist, who has operated across the globe with a focus on fintech, Payments and Banking.

Angela Yore joins as a NED and is an entrepreneur and Co-Founder of SkyParlour, a fintech-specific PR firm providing services to some of fintech’s fastest-growing organisations.

Gregor Dobbie joins as a NED and is currently the CEO of VocaLink and the Chairman of LoyalZoo. Gregor has a career that spans beyond 20 years, operating in a variety of leadership positions within organisations such as De La Rue, NCR and Mastercard.

Co-founding Partner Roger Bracken says of the new venture; “TFPA brings a unique blend of skills and capabilities to help fintechs grow and scale up. We couldn’t be more excited to work with some of the most dynamic businesses in fintech and leverage our real-world experience and help them perform to the highest levels. We are also bringing our network of senior contacts to the table, which will be ideal for companies looking to collaborate with boardroom executives or engage investors and venture capital."

Today’s news follows the recent announcement of a strategic partnership with The Strawhecker Group (TSG), a globally recognized analytics, intelligence, and consulting firm in the payments industry.