Archives: Ambassadors

Martyn is focused upon making financial services smarter and more effective for everyone. As such, he is very aligned to the mission of The Transparency Task Force.

He is a Chief Operating Officer, Programme Director, Trustee and Coach. He operates within Global Financial Services, particularly Investment Management, Wealth Management and Re/Insurance. He has worked in Industry and Professional Services around the world. He generates value through delivery of 1) large change programmes and transformations 2) M&A implementation 3) business operating models improvements 4) operational excellence 5) effective Board governance and advisory.

He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investment, an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers and has a MBA from London Business School. He runs his own blog www.transformationblog.net is a judge on www.themad33.com, is an exam moderator with the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investment, is a Trustee of www.jst.org.uk and is currently studying with the Henka Institute to become a certified transformation coach.

For over 30 years Charles was involved in international asset management, for much of that time as a manager of funds invested in Asian and emerging stock-markets. He managed the largest closed-end fund investing in Asia at the time, together with other closed-ended and open-ended funds. He also helped set up a number of specialist direct investment and private equity management companies in the region.  He later became Co-Chair of Govett Investments and, after they were bought out, set up and led a listed boutique investment management business.

During his long career in investment he became keenly aware of the need for greater transparency in retail investment products and advisory services, and the urgent need for a cultural shift in attitudes and behaviours in the financial services industry as a whole.

Since 2003 Charles has been the Chair of an educational charity, the Human Values Foundation, which helps children’s social and emotional development through learning about and practising values. For the last three years has been a member of the Steering Group of the UK Values Alliance which aims to place values at the heart of society.  He is the main co-ordinator of the  World Values Day, an annual campaign which raises awareness of the fundamental importance of values in addressing the many serious individual, organisational and societal problems in the world today.

Simon is co-founder and CEO of Findexable – the new digital platform for fintech insight and benchmarking, and home to the Global Fintech Index.

As Ai and analytics re-shape business, Findexable’s mission is to make it easier to gather, interpret and benchmark fintech activity and enable unmoderated, real-time insight on the global fintech ecosystem.

Simon has two decades of experience producing financial intelligence content, research and events for global financial publishers including The Economist, Euromoney Institutional Investor and IFR (part of the Thomson Reuters Group), as well as boutique research publishers and media companies across Europe and the Middle East.

He was previously a director of banking events and publishing house VRL (now Global Data) before setting up Eurasia Insights, a regional communications and content creation business focussed on emerging Europe, the Middle East and Turkey.

In 2015 he joined MagnaCarta Communications to build the company’s research and analytics capabilities to help financial technology firms define their proposition and tell their story, before setting up Findexable in response to growing customer demand for an easier, more efficient means of gathering insight and analytics.

Kay Ingram is a writer, commentator, conference presenter and broadcaster on personal finance. A Chartered Financial Planner and Chartered Insurance Practitioner, she has previously advised companies and individuals on all aspects of personal finance and employee benefits.

She is a passionate believer in the need for financial education and for financial services firms to design their services to promote good consumer outcomes.  She supports the goals of the Transparency Taskforce and would like to see every household being given access to financial guidance and advice which is clear, fair and relevant to their needs.

She wants women to avoid falling into the Gender Pensions Gap and has written a practical guide to help them plan for a secure retirement. She regularly contributes to the consumer press including Investors Chronicle, Express and Mail and specialist publications What Investment, Accountancy and Reward Strategy. She is keen to encourage employers to help their staff access good advice and guidance through the workplace and believes that employers will distinguish themselves by offering financial well being benefits which in turn will lead to greater productivity and retention.

Darren has been a financial adviser since 1992 establishing his own business in 2013 to provide full financial planning to a small number of clients and their families.

In 2016 a Panorama documentary on a pension scam spurred Darren to establish a House of Commons petition calling for a ban on cold calling for pensions as this was the primary method used by scammers to target their victims. He then spearheaded that campaign gaining support across the pensions industry, advisory profession and media.

The ban was then announced by the then Chancellor Phillip Hammond in his budget speech in the November of 2016. The battle did not end there and continued pressure was required on a government distracted by other issues before the ban finally passed into law in January 2019.

He is a regular contributor to FT Adviser and commentator in trade and high street press pushing for increased consumer awareness and engagement with financial advice and planning whilst also pushing for the profession to raise standards and the quality of advice.

I’m an investigative journalist with 10 years working in the media and – sometimes – in education; I write widely for locals, nationals and online publishers, and have stories in the Sunday Times, Times, Byline Times, Mirror, Computer Weekly and DeSmog. Subjects I’ve researched span governmental transparency, social justice, environmental sustainability, crime, climate risk, the impact of disinformation and organised crime. I adhere to the NUJ Code in all my work, including protecting the identity of confidential sources: https://www.nuj.org.uk/about/nuj-code/

In recent years observing complex cases in the High Court, I noted the kafkaesque impact of abuse of process by acknowledged ‘bad actors’ (lawyers who were later struck off, con-artists, and the like), against a backdrop of heavy justice sector cuts. The hardship this imposed on their – relatively powerless – victims was a stark reality that was drawn to my passing attention and kept repeating itself. I could not help but observe the extremely heavy toll on victims of white collar crime within that system. That interest drew me to Transparency Task Force’s engaging symposia, impressed by their anti-scam work. When Andy Agathangelou then asked me if I would like to do some investigations with TTF I said yes. I serve here as Head of Media Outreach and Investigative Journalism – voluntarily. It is a delight to collaborate with a group of public-spirited people advocating for consumers’ interests. If you have a tip or untold ‘story’ that TTF should research, on transparency, hidden truths, financial stability and improving financial services for consumers, please do feel free to reach out to me.