Building for the future
13 Nov 2024
Jack McRae meets Chris Biddick, managing director for Transfer Agency at Bravura, to discuss his career, the company’s growth and plans for the future
Image: Bravura
Chris Biddick has spent almost three decades in the financial services industry and has no intention of slowing down.
The managing director for Bravura’s transfer agency business is in a relaxed mood as the grey, London skies overcast the stretch of the city you can see from the financial software solution company’s office.
“This business is addictive and this company is addictive,” Biddick explains. “That’s why I think people stay here, because we have brilliant products with great prospects and that client base is addictive as well.”
Biddick has been with Bravura for 15 years and has found it “quite interesting seeing the business grow from 250 people to 1,500 today.”
He explains that his extensive time spent at the company is not an individual feat, but points to a number of colleagues who have worked at Bravura for a long time.
“One of the things about Bravura is the tenure of our staff and experience has been incredible,” he says proudly.
“This has really helped build a phenomenal culture in this place. A small to medium-sized business with ginormous custodian clients, it’s been like joining a startup, but joining a startup with the best client list that anyone’s ever had.”
Bravura’s esteemed client list means the company has to ensure they are “triple A-star” to retain their services. “We were very focused this year on retaining that sensational client list, which we’ve now done. Everyone’s re-signed long-term deals, which has been fantastic.”
New signings
As Bravura continues to grow and expand, the business has had to be careful to recruit the best and right people.
Biddick reveals that they have made a number of senior-level hires in recent weeks and months to meet the demands of their growing business.
“We’ve recruited a new global head of product management and marketing, Aaron Knowles. Aaron has 18 years experience in products and was chief product officer in his last role at Iress.”
“We have a guy in the UK called Matt Pells, who runs our transfer agency product as well,” he adds. “So we’ve now got that product machine really, really running.”
Rob Jessurun has also joined Bravura as business development director and Biddick jokes that “it feels like he has been here for ages, but he’s only been in about three or four weeks!
He comes with loads of industry experience and we’re really ready to go after growth now. We’re really focused on growing.”
As the company aims to grow and grow, how important is hiring people who are the right fit?
“It’s key. We’re not a huge business, so it’s more about recruiting quality people and bringing them into that culture — one that is very much a roll your sleeves up, get the job done, type of organisation,” he replies.
Maintaining a strong culture has been a hugely important task for the leadership team, and Biddick admits that “a lot of it was hard in the last few years, particularly through that Covid-19 period, to maintain that culture.”
Despite those challenges, “it takes a lot of effort from our leadership that we have online meetings but also face-to-face on location to deliver the energy.”
The state of play
Biddick believes Bravura are leading edge in the industry and that is down to “operational efficiency and operational resiliency.
They are the buzzwords that you probably hear a lot!” Biddick laughs.
“We deal with four of the five biggest custodians globally, so you might imagine the amount of audit pressure we come under constantly,” he explains.
“We’re having to constantly prove to ourselves and those clients that we’re as resilient as we can be.”
One of the ways in which they maintain their high standards is through their “key objective on an annual basis: how do we get better at what we do? How do we take the cost out? How to become more efficient? How do we take the risk out?”
One of the big industry-wide concerns is migrations from legacy to modern technology, particularly with T+1 around the corner for the UK and Europe.
Biddick has no concerns for Bravura, who are already operating on a T+1 cycle. He explains how “we have a tool called orchestrator, which is all about automation — it is workflow on steroids. You don’t have people pressing buttons, we don’t have people accessing our core tools anymore. They are accessed by the enablement tech.”
Biddick’s optimism is compelling and believes him and his team are ready to seize on the opportunities for growth in the coming years.
Looking forwards
“We’re predicting growth,” Biddick says. “We have to keep guidance as a listed business each year. We’re getting our costs under control, as well as our clients.”
He continues: “We’re seeing cost stabilisation being really good. We’re starting to see green shoots of growth, I don’t think we’ll see significant growth in our FY25. but we will in FY26. We are building towards that trajectory.”
As for the industry, Biddick expects “efficiency and resiliency will continue [to dominate discourse]. We are also seeing clients being more inquisitive about technological advancements. We talk about blockchain and AI all the time, so how do they impact us going forward?”
Biddick and Bravura are noticing that the custodians that they work with are “super keen to do work in the alternatives space. They want to know how they can leverage the great operations processes they have in place today to make that a more accessible investment opportunity for their clients.”
Alongside alternatives, Biddick is closely following the evolution of tokenisation. He also expects that as “blockchain, DLT, and tokenisation moves forward, the industry [will] get aligned on how they’re going to collaborate together and we’ll start to see that move forward in the AI space.”
Biddick is keen to talk more about AI and “can see ourselves being in a position where AI is absolutely fundamental to what we offer our clients or work with our clients. I think we will see an industry that is starting to slowly shift towards a tokenised model.”
Biddick has been at Bravura for over a decade and yet his enthusiasm for the future is unrelenting. The managing director still finds each day all the more addictive.
The managing director for Bravura’s transfer agency business is in a relaxed mood as the grey, London skies overcast the stretch of the city you can see from the financial software solution company’s office.
“This business is addictive and this company is addictive,” Biddick explains. “That’s why I think people stay here, because we have brilliant products with great prospects and that client base is addictive as well.”
Biddick has been with Bravura for 15 years and has found it “quite interesting seeing the business grow from 250 people to 1,500 today.”
He explains that his extensive time spent at the company is not an individual feat, but points to a number of colleagues who have worked at Bravura for a long time.
“One of the things about Bravura is the tenure of our staff and experience has been incredible,” he says proudly.
“This has really helped build a phenomenal culture in this place. A small to medium-sized business with ginormous custodian clients, it’s been like joining a startup, but joining a startup with the best client list that anyone’s ever had.”
Bravura’s esteemed client list means the company has to ensure they are “triple A-star” to retain their services. “We were very focused this year on retaining that sensational client list, which we’ve now done. Everyone’s re-signed long-term deals, which has been fantastic.”
New signings
As Bravura continues to grow and expand, the business has had to be careful to recruit the best and right people.
Biddick reveals that they have made a number of senior-level hires in recent weeks and months to meet the demands of their growing business.
“We’ve recruited a new global head of product management and marketing, Aaron Knowles. Aaron has 18 years experience in products and was chief product officer in his last role at Iress.”
“We have a guy in the UK called Matt Pells, who runs our transfer agency product as well,” he adds. “So we’ve now got that product machine really, really running.”
Rob Jessurun has also joined Bravura as business development director and Biddick jokes that “it feels like he has been here for ages, but he’s only been in about three or four weeks!
He comes with loads of industry experience and we’re really ready to go after growth now. We’re really focused on growing.”
As the company aims to grow and grow, how important is hiring people who are the right fit?
“It’s key. We’re not a huge business, so it’s more about recruiting quality people and bringing them into that culture — one that is very much a roll your sleeves up, get the job done, type of organisation,” he replies.
Maintaining a strong culture has been a hugely important task for the leadership team, and Biddick admits that “a lot of it was hard in the last few years, particularly through that Covid-19 period, to maintain that culture.”
Despite those challenges, “it takes a lot of effort from our leadership that we have online meetings but also face-to-face on location to deliver the energy.”
The state of play
Biddick believes Bravura are leading edge in the industry and that is down to “operational efficiency and operational resiliency.
They are the buzzwords that you probably hear a lot!” Biddick laughs.
“We deal with four of the five biggest custodians globally, so you might imagine the amount of audit pressure we come under constantly,” he explains.
“We’re having to constantly prove to ourselves and those clients that we’re as resilient as we can be.”
One of the ways in which they maintain their high standards is through their “key objective on an annual basis: how do we get better at what we do? How do we take the cost out? How to become more efficient? How do we take the risk out?”
One of the big industry-wide concerns is migrations from legacy to modern technology, particularly with T+1 around the corner for the UK and Europe.
Biddick has no concerns for Bravura, who are already operating on a T+1 cycle. He explains how “we have a tool called orchestrator, which is all about automation — it is workflow on steroids. You don’t have people pressing buttons, we don’t have people accessing our core tools anymore. They are accessed by the enablement tech.”
Biddick’s optimism is compelling and believes him and his team are ready to seize on the opportunities for growth in the coming years.
Looking forwards
“We’re predicting growth,” Biddick says. “We have to keep guidance as a listed business each year. We’re getting our costs under control, as well as our clients.”
He continues: “We’re seeing cost stabilisation being really good. We’re starting to see green shoots of growth, I don’t think we’ll see significant growth in our FY25. but we will in FY26. We are building towards that trajectory.”
As for the industry, Biddick expects “efficiency and resiliency will continue [to dominate discourse]. We are also seeing clients being more inquisitive about technological advancements. We talk about blockchain and AI all the time, so how do they impact us going forward?”
Biddick and Bravura are noticing that the custodians that they work with are “super keen to do work in the alternatives space. They want to know how they can leverage the great operations processes they have in place today to make that a more accessible investment opportunity for their clients.”
Alongside alternatives, Biddick is closely following the evolution of tokenisation. He also expects that as “blockchain, DLT, and tokenisation moves forward, the industry [will] get aligned on how they’re going to collaborate together and we’ll start to see that move forward in the AI space.”
Biddick is keen to talk more about AI and “can see ourselves being in a position where AI is absolutely fundamental to what we offer our clients or work with our clients. I think we will see an industry that is starting to slowly shift towards a tokenised model.”
Biddick has been at Bravura for over a decade and yet his enthusiasm for the future is unrelenting. The managing director still finds each day all the more addictive.
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