Inclusive Investing Conference

Kate Blatchford-Hick joined the FCA in 2015 from the Competition and Markets Authority. Kate has worked on and led a number of market studies including asset management, investment platforms and defined contribution workplace pensions. Kate is currently head of the Consumer Investments Market Analysis and Policy department. In the role, Kate has responsibility for the FCA’s horizon scanning and harm identification across consumer investment markets. Kate also leads the FCA’s portfolio of consumer investment policy work including distribution and advice policy.

Luke Peyton is the Head of the Financial Promotions and Enforcement Task force, which is responsible for the supervision of financial promotions, firms exploiting their FCA authorisation, and protecting the FCA perimeter. Luke has been with the regulator since 2010 and has held a number of supervisory and operational roles, including Private Secretary to the Executive Director of Supervision. He has previously worked on establishing new functions, teams and ways of working in the FCA. Prior to his current role, Luke led the delivery of the FCA’s sanctions supervisory work following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Anna Brading is a finance content creator, and founder of money mentoring platform, Mentora Money. Anna is known for her sharp financial insights and empowering material for her community of over 190,000 people across her social channels. She is committed to improving her community’s financial literacy by creating content focused on personal finance, personal development, business and investing that is engaging, yet easily digestible. Anna’s content is a go-to source for anyone looking to take control of their financial future.

Elisabeth is a Partner in the Financial Services Regulatory team at CMS. She has more than 25 years’ experience representing financial institutions in cases involving both UK and overseas regulators, dealing with contentious supervisory interventions through to regulatory investigations and enforcement action. She is also frequently appointed as a trusted advisor to members of senior management when facing their own individual investigations. She has significant experience in cases concerning insider dealing, market abuse, trader mis-marking and financial crime risks in the wholesale sector. Within the retail industry she has expertise in representing clients on cases relating to mis-selling, consumer redress programmes and complaints mishandling. Increasingly she advises on whistleblower investigations and provides support on implementing connected policies and frameworks. She has also advised and acted on high profile conduct issues in the SME corporate banking sector. Elisabeth has previously spent time at a major bank where she managed the global retail internal investigations team. She has been appointed as a Skilled Person by both the PRA and FCA on various engagements. She also sits on The Investing and Savings Alliance (TISA) Consumer Engagement Policy Committee, helping the investment industry respond to regulatory change. Elisabeth has been independently nominated an Acritas Star by in-house counsel in a global client survey. She is individually ranked in Chambers UK.

Laura Burridge has been with Hargreaves Lansdown for over 8 years. Starting as a Content Writer and then working up to her current position as a Marketing Lead for Financially Fearless, share trading and value. In her role, Laura takes charge of leading a team and providing strategic direction for all campaigns and targeted communications and content. Her focus is on driving engagement and deepening relationships with clients. A particularly compelling aspect of Laura's leadership is her dedication to the Financially Fearless initiative, where she passionately addresses the projection that 60% of the UK's wealth will be in the hands of women by 2025. Recognising the power and opportunity this entails, Laura aims to empower the next generation of female investors. As a leading industry voice and thought leader on closing financial gender gaps, Laura actively spreads the mission far and wide. Her goal is to assist women across the UK in taking control of their finances at every stage. Notably, Laura does financial content differently by making campaigns relevant to diverse audiences. She employs a variety of new creative approaches, tones, and channels to engage the empowered female audience. She has also worked across HL’s currency and financial advice services since her joining back in 2015.

Theresa is a Director within the Financial Services team at EY Seren, focussing on long-term savings, pensions, and insurance. She has over 20 years’ experience in delivering award-winning, holistic customer centric strategies and programmes of work for global organisations. Theresa has provided strategic CX insight and innovation approaches to some of the world’s most successful financial services businesses, allowing them to deliver customer-centric services and products to their customers while delivering growth to the business.

Elizabeth was appointed as an independent non-executive Director in September 2021 and became Chair in April 2022. Elizabeth is a non-executive director of BAE Systems plc, Chair of the Impact Investing Institute and a Trustee of the British Museum. She was previously the CEO of Allianz Global Investors and a non executive director of Morgan Stanley Inc. and Pearson plc. She is a director of the Green Finance Institute; serves on the investment committee of the Leverhulme Trust; is a member of the CFA Future of Finance Advisory Council, the Committee of 200 and the 300 Club. Elizabeth is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and is also a published author of crime thrillers. She was awarded a CBE in January 2015 and a DBE in June 2019 for services to the economy and financial services.

Simon is Head of Business Development for Technology and Enterprise Services. The Business Development function informs and implements strategic budgetary, policy and resource allocation decisions within Technology and Enterprise services. It also supports the formulation and execution of the business policy and change agenda. Simon has been with Fidelity since 2009, where he has performed a variety of previous roles, notably supporting Fidelity's advisory platform business in the UK as Head of Proposition. Prior to his time at Fidelity, Simon spent the early part of his career in the Independent Financial Adviser market and immediately prior to joining Fidelity, in the adviser software industry.

John Gathergood is Professor of Economics at the University of Nottingham. His research specialises in behavioural personal finance using data from lenders, financial aggregators, investment platforms and credit reference agencies. He has acted as academic advisor to the Bank of England, Financial Conduct Authority and Her Majesty’s Treasury, as well as firms, industry bodies and the third sector.

Kirsty Good is a Director in Brunswick’s ESG & Sustainable Business team. She helps businesses understand the growing demand from its staff, stakeholders and customers to deliver social value, hand-in-hand with financial value. She creates leadership campaigns to support companies play their role in making the world a more diverse, fair and sustainable place to live and work. Before joining Brunswick, Kirsty was Head of Campaigns, Policy and Communications at the UK’s biggest consumer website, MoneySavingExpert.com, working directly with Martin Lewis CBE. With the organisation’s mission statement – “cutting your costs, fighting your corner” – at heart, Kirsty led many of MSE’s major national campaigns during her 5 year tenure. Before becoming a campaigner, Kirsty spent more than 15 years working as a business, economics and personal finance news journalist and Editor for BBC News and Sky News.

Britt is Head of DC and Retirement Solutions within Schroders Solutions. She has a multi-faceted background spanning defined benefit and defined contribution (DC) pensions, investment strategy, and proposition development. Britt was Head of UK DC Pensions at River and Mercantile (R&M) from 2011. After a planned career break in 2015 to have her daughter, Britt returned to the industry as Head of Proposition Development at PTL, where she worked closely with the board to further develop the firm’s diversification strategy in light of market trends - in particular consolidation. Britt returned to R&M in early 2021 to head corporate strategy for the DC business, and to lead proposition development, with a focus on the consolidation and Master Trust market. R&M was subsequently acquired by Schroders in February 2022 and Britt continued her focus on DC pensions, but with a global scope, and a more acute focus on the market trends of consolidation and DC/ wealth integration. She has a particular passion for innovation and technology driven solutions.

Tim Hogg is a behavioural economist with 10 years experience in advising the public and private sectors on how to design and implement regulation. In the context of the Consumer Duty, Tim focuses on ensuring consumer understanding and evidencing fair value. Tim designs and conducts behavioural experiments and other forms of primary research to analyse consumer behaviour and design effective customer communications. He is an experienced trainer on behavioural science, and has run behavioural experiments for organisations including the FCA, the FSCS, and Amazon.

Richard Hyde is Professor of Law, Regulation and Governance at the University of Nottingham. His research focuses on law and technology and consumer law, and particularly considers the ways that novel technologies can improve the consumer experience. He has received funding from the ESRC, UKRI, Innovate UK and the British Academy.

Joasia Luzak is Professor of Private Law and Director of the Centre for European Legal Studies at the Law School of the University of Exeter (UK). She is also a Visiting Fellow at the Amsterdam Centre for Transformative Private Law at the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands). She has over 15 years of experience with research of European consumer law and its implementation in Poland, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Germany. In her comparative research she often includes insights from consumer behaviour science. She is an editor of Journal of European Consumer and Market Law (published by Beck), Tijdschrift voor Consumentenrecht en handelspraktijken (published by Uitgeverij Parijs) and member of the editorial board of Journal of Consumer Policy (published by Springer). As of July 2023, she is a board member of the International Association of Consumer Law. She has led an international, interdisciplinary research project assessing requirements for compliance with the principle of transparency in online consumer contracts: The ABC of Online Disclosure Duties: Towards a More Uniform Assessment of the Transparency of Consumer Information in Europe (Open Research Area funding; 2016-2020). This project built on her years of expertise in evaluating the effectiveness of duties to inform in European consumer law and recommending improvements to the existing disclosure and transparency framework. She has critically analysed the effectiveness of various consumer protection measures and frameworks in her academic publications, as well as consultancy projects for the European Parliament and for the European Commission. Most recently, her research addressed such topical issues of consumer protection as: fairness of the influencer marketing; effectiveness of the regulation of online service providers; effectiveness of rules encouraging sustainable consumption in light of heterogeneity of consumers.

Ayesha is a multi-award-winning businesswoman, property investor, angel investor, and the founder & CEO of Propelle, a female-focused investment platform. Ayesha previously held roles in Morgan Stanley's Real Estate Investing and Investment Banking teams, and at Goldman Sachs, where she was an Executive Director and Private Wealth Adviser to ultra-high net worth individuals, managing over $500m of client assets.

Founder of a novel language, intelligibility & simplification technology. Working with regulators and cross sector organisations to ensure their customers better understand and act on the information they have read and are better off for having done so. Minesh has a number of hidden disabilities and is a multi -sector pioneer in digital solutions.

Ewan is the Regulatory Lead for Amplified Global. For a small organisation this involves wearing a number of hats – ensuring that Amplifi is legally and regulatory compliant, mapping Amplifi against the requirements from a wide range of sectoral rules, and liaising with the FCA and other regulators directly, through initiatives such as the FCA Sandbox. Ewan’s background is in financial services policy and regulation. He’s worked previously as both a Director in the UK Finance and BBA retail banking teams, and as a digital identity consultant.

Carol is CEO, TISA as well as COO and Company Secretary for the wider TISA Group. Carol has been in financial services since 1998, having previously worked in variety of industries, including education, local government, Civil Service and the gaming industry. A qualified and experienced teacher Carol gained her degree at King Alfred’s College in Winchester and taught in Romsey, Hampshire. She then spent 7 years at Skandia, managing the PEP & ISA new business and transfers department.Carol joined TISA in 2004 and has been responsible for the day-to-day running of the Association’s administration centre, technical support, member communications, expanding the events and training programme and technical issues in the cash savings sector. In 2009, she also took on the role of Company Secretary. Carol joined the TISA Board as Operations Director in July 2011, extending her responsibilities to include finance. This was swiftly followed by taking a position as Executive Director for TISA Exchange.In August 2015, Carol became Chief Operations Officer for TISA, supporting the Director General with the general running of the company and with personal responsibilities for Children’s Financial Education, internal administration, HR and finance together with acting as TISA spokesman for the media and at functions.Carol is also a Director for both TeX (the contract club managing the legal structure supporting electronic messaging for transfers) and CT Holdings & Services Ltd (which operates under the brand of STAR where TeX and Criterion are working in collaboration to deliver the Service Level Agreements recommended by the Transfers & Re-registration Industry Group tasked by FCA to improve transfer times).Carol was appointed CEO, TISA Membership Services in January 2022 following the retirement of David Dalton-Brown.

Faith Reynolds works in an advisory capacity across a number of consumer-related initiatives. She is an advisor to the board at TISA and is also leading on research initiatives to improve communications and break down barriers to investing. She works with start-up Amplified Global and is the industry lead for a BA Fellowship with the University of Nottingham using novel methods to improve consumer understanding of complex legal and regulatory communications. Faith has recently taken up the role of Chair of the Advisory Board for UKFin+, which funds research collaborations for wicked problems in financial services. She is a non-executive director at Fair4All Finance which distributes dormant assets for financial inclusion. She is also a non-executive for the Payment Systems Regulator and has been a leader in developing Open Banking and Smart Data in the UK.