Meet the team: Mark Aldred – Head of International Sales

Our ‘Meet the team‘ blog series focuses on celebrating the people within Auriga.

Auriga is built from a vast team of experts, with diverse experience and backgrounds – each bringing something unique and of great value to the company. This month, we spoke to Mark Aldred, Head of International Sales, about his role, his favourite moments, and his perspective on banking technology.

What’s your role at Auriga?

My role is to support the expansion of Auriga into new geographies around the world. I’m based in U.K.  but my role covers anywhere outside of our domestic (Italian) market and the Francophone region. I’m privileged to be able to work in a role which allows me to see so many new markets and opportunities.

What’s been your favourite moment at Auriga?

It has to be our 25th birthday celebrations in September last year. It was great to see such a talented Auriga team celebrating what has truly been a fantastic journey, and to look ahead to what the next 25 years has to offer!

Why is Auriga different?

Auriga is focussed on a few things and does them exceptionally well. If you look back to when the company was founded 25 year ago, they had the foresight to deliver solutions which have led to where we are today. Auriga has been at the forefront of the digital revolution for banks, from self-service to online and mobile banking platforms covering all digital channels as well as the new trends towards transformed branches. Today we support all channels whether operated by the bank’s staff or its customers.

We have found that by providing a more streamlined solution for banks, we can enable them to deliver a much improved customer experience.

What’s the best thing about working in banking technology?

Banking technology can improve so much of the way we access financial services.  I doubt that any other market has developed so quickly and diversified so much in order to keep pace with changing client demands and expectations.

What’s the biggest challenge for banking technology and its relationship with customers?

Access to financial services and choice for customers is one of the most important things for our economy. Sometimes it seems that in the rush for digital some organisations are looking to wage a war on cash, but this just erodes financial choice for consumers.

We have a responsibility to deliver choice and mechanisms to all customers regardless of how they want to access services, where they’re based or their net worth. Technology must make things better, not reduce choice and opportunity.

How do the markets you work in differ from each other and the rest of the world?

A key highlight of my role is that I get exposure to a broad range of markets. They are all differently developed, and have differing histories, and legacies. Each country and region has its own way of delivering and exploiting technology and banking infrastructure to support its needs. I find it fascinating how digital banking infrastructure is rapidly developing in some regions, even sometimes leapfrogging the development seen in other parts of the world.

It’s particularly exciting to be able to provide solutions that are equally viable in the most developed economies as well as those where there isn’t reliable infrastructure.

All areas and markets have their differences. For instance, in the adoption of new payment technology – the UK leads the way in terms of abundance, but many markets (of note, France) are seeing a huge growth in its use.

Similarly, when measuring the adoption of non-traditional firms (including challenger banks), and comparing positive experiences, it is traditional firms that come out ahead in most of Europe, while in the UK, non-traditional firms lead by 11.6 percentage points.

I suppose I could sum it up by saying that everywhere is different but everywhere is the same…