Fintech business veteran, Stewart Foster, with over 21 years of experience in the financial technology industry, has joined 1st Risk Solutions “1RS”, a provider of Risk and Compliance Software and Services to the financial services industry as both a Director and shareholder to drive new business growth and build out the software side of the 1RS business.
Commenting on the changes he has seen over the 20-odd years, Foster says: “From the beginning of that period there was either nothing or very rudimentary first bits of technology available in the marketplace, but what amazes me is that there are still large parts of financial services which aren’t very advanced, including risk and compliance.”
Foster believes that there are large areas crying out to be more efficient. “There is a big opportunity to automate things in a fairly simple and easy manner,” he says. “My purpose in life is to provide software that helps people.”
The target client base for 1RS is the smaller to mid-size FCA regulated companies. “It’s all quite cost sensitive so they end up with a bag of bits and the opportunity is to provide pretty low cost, simple software that automates some stuff for them and makes their life easier.”
Foster’s arrival comes on the back of the 1RS’s recent launch to the market of their new Enterprise Risk and Compliance solution called ERIC. ERIC is specifically designed for regulated companies who want a single, modern, easy to implement solution to meet all of their risk requirements, to reduce the cost of their risk management and compliance, and future proof their ability to react to and comply with all future regulatory changes, Foster says. ERIC offers end to end process management linking risk & control data to regulatory rules, losses or risk events, issues and audit points as well as address specific regulatory concerns such as SM&CR, MAR, Conduct, IT, and Vendor Risk capability.
