CEO Today Europe Awards

89 www.ceotodaymagazine.com CEO Today Europe Awards 2018 the united kingdom RICH WAGNER Founder & CEO of Cashplus ABOUT RICH WAGNER Rich Wagner, the dynamic CEO and Founder of Cashplus, is one of the key leaders in the UK payments industry. He has provided CEO and Board level experience within regulated banks and financial institutions for more than half of his 30 years of experience, including executive roles at Visa, Barclaycard and Providian. During the past 13 years since launch, Rich has steered Cashplus to numerous industry firsts including the first non-bank to secure a direct Issuing Membership with Mastercard, and the first non-bank to have banking services at the Post Office. Rich’s passion for levelling the UK banking playing field and giving “UK PLC” and individuals straightforward, fast and efficient alternatives to ‘traditional’ banking is well known. In fact, in addition to his CEO role, Rich is a dedicated industry advocate / activist having served as Chairman and Deputy Chair of the Emerging Payments Association for the past 4 years. During this time, Rich has worked as a key catalyst to bring positive change to the UK payments and challenger banking landscape, most notably playing a central role in convincing the Bank of England to offer non-banks direct access to the payment system, which will lead to more effective market competition and greater choice for UK consumers and businesses. So it’s no surprise that Rich was also selected as the first non-bank board member of the Euro Retail Payments Board at the European Central Bank in recognition of his status as an influential industry champion. Rich has often rightly been described as one of the UK’s first-ever Fintech entrepreneurs and disruptors – leading in Fintech before Fintech became a “thing”! Under Rich’s leadership, Cashplus has proven it’s possible to be both innovative and profitable, proudly wearing the crown as the first Fintech to introduce an instant online Business Current Account - paving the way for the neo-banks to follow in Cashplus’ footsteps. Rich has earned bragging rights as Cashplus is almost certainly the first Fintech challenger to banks to become and remain profitable six years ago, and has acquired over 1.3 million UK customers since opening its doors, including 100,000+ small business owners. And, there’s no end in sight as Cashplus is now well into the process to make the move from a challenger to banks to becoming an actual specialist SME challenger bank and lender by early 2019. Leading by example, Rich believes that it’s the entrepreneurial spirit and customer focused culture that he and his team have created that has led to the drive and determination of Cashplus’ people to continually push the boundaries of traditional banking for the benefit of its customers – those typically overlooked by the High Street banks. FIRM PROFILE Fintech pioneer Cashplus has developed a wide range of digital banking services, which challenge the traditional banking model. Through its proprietary technologies, award winning products and superior in- house data analytics, Cashplus has served 2.5 out of every 100 UK adults and currently commands 7% market share of new business current accounts opened by SMEs every year. Cashplus specialises in offering UK entrepreneurs and small businesses, fast, convenient and transparent banking solutions to efficiently manage their finances and business cash flow. Recently voted the Best Challenger Bank 2017 by readers of PayBefore even though it’s not a Bank yet, Cashplus continues to provide innovative banking solutions for customers typically overlooked by traditional banks. www.cashplusgroup.com