Advisory Board
Julian Wells
Director, Whitecap Consulting
Julian is a strategy consultant with over 25 years experience in financial and professional services.
Whitecap Consulting is a strategy consultancy based in Leeds, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Bristol, Newcastle and Birmingham. It is particularly active in high growth sectors. Whitecap’s financial services clients have included banks, building societies, technology providers, FinTechs, retailers, universities, and various firms in the intermediary financial services market.
Whitecap is involved in multiple regional FinTech and LegalTech ecosystems. The firm is directly involved in FinTech North and FinTech West, both of which it helped create and now helps coordinate. Via these initiatives, Julian is also involved in the FinTech National Network which was created in 2019 to help link the national Fintech sector across the UK. Whitecap also leads the LegalTech in Leeds initiative, which is a regional LegalTech community in the Leeds City Region which is linked to various national initiatives.
Charlotte Crosswell OBE
Chair of the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT)
Charlotte has been involved in capital markets, fintech and technology throughout her career – as CEO, Chair, Board Advisor and Non-Executive Director. Prior to CFIT, Charlotte was Chair and Trustee of Open Banking and was also CEO of the fintech industry body, Innovate Finance. In this role, she supported the work of Sir Ron Kalifa in delivering the strategic fintech review (“The Kalifa Review”). She works closely with entrepreneurs, financial services firms, academia, government and regulators on fintech advocacy and strategy. Charlotte received an OBE for her contribution to financial services in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2021. She believes firmly in a diversity and innovation-first approach.
Pavle Avramovic
Manager, Emerging Tech & Research, Financial Conduct Authority
Pavle leads the Emerging Technologies function at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). He focuses on providing insights and thought leadership on how emerging technologies could impact financial services markets, consumers and regulators. His areas of focus include quantum computing, privacy enhancing technologies, synthetic data and distributed ledger technologies.
Previously he was closely involved in FCA’s efforts across RegTech and SupTech, including the TechSprint work programme. He also leads the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF) Horizon Scanning Workstream and is a member of the World Economic Forum Quantum Security Working Group.
He holds a MSc in Digital Innovation and Information Systems from the London School of Economics and is an Industrial Fellow at the University of East London. He has presented multiple seminars and co-authored reports for the Harvard Data Science Review, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, the Financial Action Task Force and other international bodies.
Lauren Langton
Head of Advocacy for incuto
Lauren is Head of Advocacy at incuto, a Yorkshire based company who provides a multisided platform for credit unions, community banks and CDFI’s. By improving the infrastructure of these “responsible lenders”, incuto directly contributes to the impact they have on their members, presenting them as credible alternatives to high interest lenders, including loan sharks.
Lauren’s previous role was as CEO of Northumberland Community Bank (NCB), created in 2017 after the successful merger of 2 credit unions. During her tenure, Lauren led the digital transformation of NCB, using incuto’s developing range of products and services.
Prior to working in community banking, Lauren had over 30 years’ experience working for Yorkshire & Clydesdale Banks, fulfilling various roles in a wide range of areas such as private banking, lending, compliance and marketing.
She is now dedicated to changing the affordable lending sector to enable it to play a more prominent part in the UK’s financial services sector.
