He has also been appointed as a Board Member of the Avertis Group. The appointment follows on the heels of first direct Commercial Director and Head of Marketing for HSBC, Peter Simpson, who also recently joined Avertis as Commercial Director, following the company's triple digit growth and aggressive expansion into new markets.

David joins Avertis from Co-operative Financial Services (CFS) where he was the Director of Security and Major Investigations for the whole of CFS, the Co-operative Bank, smile the Internet Bank and Co-operative Insurance Society. At CFS David was responsible for all aspects of security, excluding information security, and all investigations into criminal activity perpetrated within and against the company. David reviewed and upgraded all of the electronic security measures to provide state of the art fully networked electronic access control at all of the major occupancy sites and fully networked digital closed circuit television at all Bank sites, enabling remote access broadband/telephone link access. He led a dedicated team of specialist investigators dealing with criminal activity, such as internal theft/fraud, e-fraud perpetrated on customers' accounts and other crimes against the assets and reputation of the company. He also sat on the CFS Business Continuity and Crisis Management teams.

Prior to joining CFS, David was a Security Manager with Scottish & Newcastle plc, Europe's leading brewing and Hotel/restaurant Company where he was responsible for product counterfeiting investigations. David is a member of the Institute of Security Management and holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Security Management from Loughborough University. Before entering the commercial sector, David had a successful police career, mainly in the CID, Regional Crime Squad (at three different ranks) and as the Deputy and subsequently Acting Regional Head of the Midlands Region of the National Criminal Intelligence Service. He retired from the police as Deputy Divisional Commander.

"Security is the biggest threat facing our customers today, not just in the financial services arena but in almost every business sector with mass market customers. It requires a sophisticated approach to prevention, management and investigation," said Mark Wilcox, Managing Director of Avertis Ltd. "David's depth of experience in both the commercial arena and law enforcement make him the ideal person to oversee our Security Services Division. His insight and consultative approach will be invaluable to our rapidly expanding corporate customer base and to our business as a whole. We're delighted to have yet another industry luminary join our management team."