Vitesse has made three appointments to its senior management team, with Richard King (pictured above, top left) as COO, Ashley Abdelmoula (pictured above, bottom) as head of insurance proposition and Bill Wilkins (pictured above, top right) as chief product and technology officer.
Early in King’s career, he was part of a management programme at General Electric, where he worked for 10 years as a Six Sigma master black belt and then ran a large-scale operation. After that, he moved to retail banking at Barclays, where he was responsible for running the mortgage operation, followed by a short time at HSBC. He entered the payments space with a move to WorldPay, before ending up in his most recent role at fintech WorldRemit.
“For almost three decades, I’ve always strived towards building processes and systems that are best in class and put the customer and client at the centre of their design,” King said. “With Vitesse, there’s an existing product which is already revolutionising the payments industry and I’m thrilled to be able to bring my expertise to the company.”
King met Vitesse CEO Phil McGriskin while at WorldRemit, leading him to join Vitesse, which recently held its Series B funding round for over US$26 million.
Before joining Vitesse, Abdelmoula held several senior roles in insurance, reinsurance, captives, and fund and wealth management over the course of almost three decades. In his new role as head of insurance proposition, he is responsible for growing the proposition across Vitesse’s insurance solutions and supporting the customer success, business development and relationship management teams with their engagement across the insurance market.
“Insurance is at the heart of any economy,” Abdelmoula said. “It’s a real driving force of good: restoring houses after a flood, covering the cost of a cancer patient, rebuilding devastated communities after a hurricane, the list goes on… I’ve created several unusual specialist risk products that challenged the way insurance is viewed by some, and it’s what excites me the most – making a difference in people's lives.”
Wilkins, who has a background in engineering at several major global technology firms, recently decided to apply his experience to help smaller organisations scale. He was a technical and product executive at First Utility, where he was part of the founding team of 30 people. He helped scale up the business to a 1,400-strong team and £1 billion in revenue, until it was bought by Shell.
“The future with Vitesse is hugely exciting,” Wilkins said. “Following a successful Series B funding round at the beginning of 2022, we’re now in a position to accelerate our product vision to create the world's largest advanced banking aggregation network. I’m ready to spearhead this operation.”
According to McGriskin, the three new additions will be influential in the growth of the Vitesse over the next 12 months.
“Vitesse aims to be the payment partner of choice for the insurance industry,” McGriskin said. “We’re focused on delivering payment and treasury functionality that makes a difference to our customers. To do that effectively, we need an ever deeper understanding of them, and the market in which they operate. With the addition of these three talented individuals, I have no doubt that the next few years are going to be extremely successful for Vitesse.”
