As a teenager, Simon Goodyear believed there was nothing that couldn’t be solved with expertise, and he’s now making use of this perception to his function at Redwood Financial institution.
Goodyear, who heads up IT on the enterprise financial institution, tells Pc Weekly about his plans.
Redwood Financial institution has lent over £760m since its launch as a cloud-based challenger financial institution in 2017. The corporate, which made a revenue of £2.7m final yr, is predicated in Letchworth Backyard Metropolis, and in addition has a presence in Warrington.
The just lately appointed chief data and expertise officer (CITO) enjoys fixing issues with expertise. “I used to joke rising up that there’s nothing a pc can’t remedy, and I nonetheless imagine that, however now I caveat it with money and time as properly,” he tells Pc Weekly.
Goodyear has a broad set of expertise. Earlier than working in monetary companies IT in his earlier three roles, he held IT roles within the media and army sectors, in software program improvement, and established some impartial software program corporations.
He additionally has expertise working in consultancy, the place he strengthened his view that software program can remedy an enormous variety of enterprise challenges.
Fintech journey
Redwood shouldn’t be the primary technology-fuelled finance agency at which Goodyear has led the IT perform. In 2017, he took up a task at automotive lender Oodle Automotive Finance, primarily based in Oxford, to guide a workforce of software program builders.
He was concerned within the speedy development of the corporate, which he describes as having a “tremendous heavy tech focus”. Oodle had about 70 workers, together with 4 software program engineers, when he joined, however by the point he left six years later, it had round 700 workers, with 90 engineers.
“I took it by that development, scaling tech and the enterprise, which was a brilliant attention-grabbing problem,” he says.
I used to joke rising up that there’s nothing a pc can’t remedy, and I nonetheless imagine that, however now I caveat it with money and time as properly Simon Goodyear, Redwood Financial institution
Oodle was “very tech heavy”, says Goodyear, with inside software program groups “constructing just about all the things, with little purchased off the shelf”.
In 2023, he switched to a different automobile lender, JBR Capital. This noticed Goodyear go from main an IT workforce of 90 individuals at Oodle to working for an organization with simply 70 workers in complete, solely considered one of whom labored on tech.
After JBR Capital was bought, Goodyear was approached a few function at Redwood Financial institution, which he says was described to him as a “actually attention-grabbing challenger financial institution, worthwhile and on the precipice of expertise being nice for them”.
He agreed to an interview, throughout which he says, “the factor that I observed most is the financial institution actually wished to alter and drive issues ahead”.
Established in 2017, Redwood Financial institution has about 7,000 clients at this time and has been worthwhile yearly since 2021. It has about 150 workers, 9 of whom are technologists.
Tech to-do listing
Goodyear recognises that whereas Redwood launched as a cloud-based financial institution, a relative tech pioneer in banking phrases, that was eight years in the past, and what was cutting-edge then shouldn’t be at this time.
“We’d like to consider how we are able to higher use the cloud in some locations, and maybe we’re not as cloud-native as we might be,” he says. “I believe there’s room to enhance.”
Automation can even characteristic excessive on Goodyear’s to-do listing. “The organisation talks about being human-led, which I agree with and I’m an enormous advocate of, however there are locations the place we’re too human-led and we’re not utilizing expertise sufficient,” he says.
“Considered one of my little mantras is permitting people so as to add worth. Computer systems are actually good at doing the boring, repetitive stuff, so the place can we use extra of that, so individuals can spend extra time understanding offers and clients and property, and writing good enterprise?”
“The organisation talks about being human-led, which I agree with and I’m an enormous advocate of, however there are locations the place we’re too human-led and we’re not utilizing expertise sufficient”
Simon Goodyear, Redwood Financial institution
Cyber safety can even obtain Goodyear’s consideration, and whereas he says there’s nothing unsuitable with the corporate’s safety posture at this time, he desires to make sure the corporate is on prime of safety for workers and clients, amid the “ever-increasing drawback of cyber safety”.
In the meantime, on its tech roadmap, Redwood will work on a cellular app, based on Goodyear.
“That’s a key undertaking for the financial institution as a complete, and it’s a part of the modernisation piece and bringing issues as much as the usual that I believe customers anticipate, even within the industrial area,” says Goodyear.
It plans to take a platform off the shelf, with a undertaking to configure it and guarantee it’s applicable for its enterprise.
Goodyear additionally has to stand up to hurry with Redwood’s core banking platform provider, Finnova, to “perceive its roadmap and the way that matches” into all the things the financial institution is doing.
Banks love Excel, ‘however I don’t’
Internally, Goodyear desires the financial institution to make higher use of the big quantity of information it holds.
“The opposite large factor for me internally, which maybe you don’t see on the skin, is information and ensuring that we’re actually in charge of all of it,” he says. “We’ve obtained numerous it, however it’s scattered across the organisation. It’s in varied completely different techniques, and whereas banks love Excel, I don’t, so I need to do away with that as a lot as potential.”
On synthetic intelligence (AI), Goodyear says its plans are within the very early levels. “From my perspective, the financial institution as a complete hasn’t actually carried out something with it, a lot past ensuring everyone has Microsoft Copilot,” he says.
“I want to grasp the financial institution a bit extra, however from a principal standpoint, I imagine in permitting people so as to add worth. It’s about the place we carry AI into the processes we’ve obtained. We’ve got to verify these processes are good, as a result of automating unhealthy stuff simply makes unhealthy stuff go quicker.”
He believes the corporate’s work with AI will initially be supplier-driven.
“We are going to have a look at our personal stuff sooner or later sooner or later. But when I have a look at the construction of the workforce, it doesn’t take a genius to grasp that we don’t have these expertise in the mean time,” he added. “I believe we have to ultimately [develop in-house], as a result of if we maintain utilizing off-the-shelf software program, we turn out to be the identical as everyone else.”
