Encompass Corporation, a leading UK regtech firm, has recently announced the promotion of Stuart Barnard, formerly the VP of finance and business operations, to the esteemed position of Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

In this newly created role, effective as of this month, Barnard will assume full responsibility for overseeing the global finance and business operations of the KYC solution provider. His duties will encompass leading various critical functions within the firm, including legal affairs, finance, human resources, revenue operations, IT infrastructure, and information security.

Barnard’s journey with Encompass began in 2016 when he joined as the Head of Finance for the company’s division in Sydney, Australia. After demonstrating exceptional leadership and strategic acumen, he transitioned to the role of VP of Finance at the company’s London office in late 2018. His dedication and contributions culminated in his well-deserved promotion to CFO in December 2022.

Wayne Johnson, co-founder and CEO of Encompass, expressed his confidence in Barnard’s capabilities, emphasizing the vital role he has played in executing the company’s strategic objectives thus far. Johnson also commended Barnard for his ability to attract and nurture a diverse and high-performing team.

Barnard’s promotion comes at an opportune time for Encompass, coinciding with the recent appointment of Neil Acworth as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) last month. Additionally, the company has been actively expanding its portfolio through strategic acquisitions, including the recent acquisitions of CoorpID and Blacksmith KYC from ING in January.

Source: fintechfutures.com

Zilch, the pioneering ad-subsidised payments network, has expanded its partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to accelerate the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) advancements across its platform.

This collaboration aims to bolster Zilch’s AI capabilities by leveraging AWS’s cutting-edge AI and Machine Learning (ML) services. The objective is to transform various aspects of Zilch’s operations, including customer service, merchant interactions, and fraud detection.

Renowned for its innovative ad-subsidised payments model, Zilch collaborates with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to elevate its AI capabilities, enhancing customer service, deepening engagement with merchants, and fortifying fraud detection measures.

The company will continue harnessing AWS AI and ML services to revolutionise customer interactions, merchant engagement, and fraud detection. This partnership endeavors to redefine the landscape of consumer lending and payment solutions.

Philip Belamant, Co-Founder and CEO of Zilch, highlighted the competitive advantage gained from leveraging AWS’s AI and ML services. He stated, “Our customers use Zilch around 100 times a year, which gives us 15-18 times the data available to our closest peers. The combination of our large, high-quality data sets and AWS’s AI and ML services is going to give us a very tangible competitive advantage. Zilch will be using AI to invest in increasing the productivity of our people, accelerating unit economics and creating more value for our customers.”

Tricia Troth, Head of Startups, UK and Ireland, at AWS, expressed enthusiasm for Zilch’s decision to leverage AWS’s AI capabilities. Troth commented, “We’re delighted that Zilch has selected AWS to bring the transformative potential of AI and generative AI to consumer lending. With Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock, Zilch is able to deliver more accurate and faster lending decisions, and expand its offer to more consumers across the UK and into new geographies and markets.”

Sean Hederman, Chief Technology Officer at Zilch, emphasized the company’s longstanding relationship with AWS and its commitment to innovation. He said, “We first called AWS back in 2018 when we merely sketched out the first tech architecture, so Zilch was literally born in the cloud. Today we’re proud to run the majority of our infrastructure on AWS. This has allowed us to seamlessly handle the massive scale we’ve achieved. We’re now shifting gears up to fully unleash our upgraded AI strategy and hiring top AI talent. This will see us rapidly move beyond our current industry-leading cloud operations and into a new hyperscale data and AI-driven cloud environment.”

Source: fintech.global