This marks the start of a three year growth plan, backed by their new investors Saints Chamonix (US based venture capital).

David Ireland joins as Sales & Marketing Director from InfoPrint Solutions, a joint venture between IBM Printing Systems and Ricoh, Simon Gulliford joins as a non-executive director, having previously been Director of Marketing with Barclays and Colin Chisholm, previously with State Street, has joined as HR Manager.

One of the key areas of expertise driving the company's growth is its ability to transform transactional customer communications, such as bills and statements, into powerful marketing vehicles. Whether in print or electronic media, FST can utilise customer insight to combine traditional documentation with marketing messages and product offers aligned to each customer's unique requirements. This highly personalised and targeted approach can deliver far higher conversion rates than traditional direct marketing.

Ron Ramage, Managing Director at FST Technologies said: "I'm delighted to welcome David, Simon and Colin to FST and I am sure that they will make a big impact on our business. Our aim, backed by our investors, is to be the UK's leading outsourced communications provider to the financial services sector in three years.

"FST has a great value proposition for the financial sector. Current pressures on make their communications more effective by offering more choice and personalisation mean that outsourcing is really able to show its worth.

"We've worked hard to bring in some of the best people in the business to deliver our three year growth plan. We are looking to strengthen our sales team to take advantage of the opportunities we are now seeing across the UK."

David Ireland said: "FST is a company with real potential. The technology has been developed over a long period in direct response to the evolving needs of some of the leading brands within the banking and financial services market.

"This is a particularly exciting time to join FST, taking on such a pivotal role with one of the leaders in the field. Their expertise in delivering multi-channel 'Transpromo' solutions allows clients to convey marketing messages in transactional documents where industry analysis has proved that customers are more likely to read them than with traditional direct mail - 30% of which remains unopened. I look forward to playing a significant part in driving forward the company's future."

David has spent 25 years at IBM with the last 17 focused on many aspects of output management including multi-channel document delivery. Simon Gulliford was Group Marketing Director at Barclays and runs his own consultancy company working with companies such as EMAP and Sears Group.