Karen Line joins as sales manager while Ross Williams joins as a senior key account manager. Both report to the UK sales director, Barry Frame.

The expansion comes six months after Avaloq doubled the size of its London presence with a new office in the City, as well as significant new client wins in the UK. In February, Avaloq announced that Smith & Williamson, the financial and professional services firm, enhanced its relationship by adopting Avaloq’s SaaS solution; in April, Brewin Dolphin, the £44.1* billion wealth manager, selected Avaloq’s SaaS service to support innovation and enable future scale. Other UK clients include Canaccord Genuity Wealth Management and Coutts.

Prior to joining Avaloq, Karen was a senior relationship manager for four years at financial services consultancy and outsourcing company Riskcare. In total, she brings over 20 years of sales and relationship management experience to Avaloq, having also held roles at FusionExperience, BNY Mellon and Dion Global Solutions.

Ross has 20 years of experience in financial software account management, starting his career at Bloomberg in London where he was responsible for relationships with a number of leading financial institutions, before managing a blend of buy- and sell-side customers in Zurich and Stockholm. He has worked for Neonet Securities and, most recently, Fidessa, where he spent seven years managing tier 1 asset managers using on-premise technology before a period of three years managing a portfolio of banks using a SaaS solution.

Both the London office move at the start of the year and the two new hires are part of an expansion drive by Avaloq across both its London and Edinburgh sites as the firm targets strong growth in the UK. The expansion and investment in London complements similar growth at Avaloq’s Research & Development facility in Edinburgh, one of three R&D centres globally, which saw staff numbers increase by more than 50% in 2018. The two new hires mean the London office now has 49 members of staff in total.

Jonathan Davis, UK managing director at Avaloq, said: “We are delighted to have Karen and Ross join the Avaloq team at a time when the firm is seeing exceptional demand from private banks and wealth managers for our SaaS, BPaaS and on-premise solutions.

“While a number of financial institutions in the UK have grasped the nettle and are capitalising on the significant benefits that digital infrastructures and cloud-based processes deliver, many are still hampered by legacy and outdated systems. The opportunities for agile, digitised private banks and wealth managers are significant, particularly in an era of PSD2 and Open Banking and the need to react quickly to new regulations, the need to launch new products, and the benefits of working with a range of third parties. With our larger team, Avaloq is well positioned to help financial institutions in the UK benefit from the technological developments redefining the financial services sector.”

At the start of September, Avaloq reported record half-year revenues of CHF 288 million, an increase of 5 percent year-on-year. Adjusted EBITDA was CHF 38 million for the period. The strong performance was driven by sustained demand for the firm’s SaaS, BPaaS and on-premise solutions from existing and new clients, including Brewin Dolphin and Smith & Williamson.