Mike West calls it a career

Mike West recently retired from a 30-year career at Broadridge and its prior brands.

The veteran fintech marketer, 65, has pivoted from covering trade processing and asset servicing to reading Thoreau and playing padel. Traders Magazine* caught up with the denizen of Teddington in southwest London to hear more.

How/why did you first get into the capital markets business?
By 1987 I had already spent several years in commercial banking at Lloyds, followed by several more in the payments technology space, latterly as an operational analyst at BACS (Bankers’ Automated Clearing Services). I was looking for my next step and was offered a senior technical author role at a post-trade capital markets fintech. This turned out to be a pivotal introduction and learning opportunity — you can’t be an author unless you understand the industry and the roles of your readership, which in my case included front and back office teams as well as technology groups. It really was an ideal point of entry — indeed many of the authors that I have recruited have used it as the perfect springboard to launch successful financial markets careers.

How did your career evolve?
My authorship experience, combined with my customer-centric approach and perceived organisational skills, meant that I was increasingly called on to conduct marketing programmes. So when I moved on to Wilco International in 1994, I quickly set up three streams of writers — technical-, configuration- and user-focused — and also established a marketing group. As the company grew, my focus became solely focused on marketing, much to my enduring satisfaction.

Wilco was acquired in 1995 by ADP, becoming an international arm of ADP’s financial services division. Then in 2007 ADP spun off the entire division, which became Broadridge Financial Solutions. So in all, I have enjoyed continuous employment as a marketing leader with Broadridge and its prior brands for over 30 years, and helped contribute to its significant international growth trajectory across regions and segments.

How did the industry change over the course of your career?
Change has been a constant, and especially so during my time focused on capital markets fintech. Your readers will have a good sense of transactional volume growth, the velocity of regulatory and market change, the pressure to drive operational efficiency and resilience, and the underlying causes of these changes.

The good news is that technology investment and innovation have played a fundamental role in delivering against these needs. Front-to-back office frictionless workflows are now more prevalent, and on a centralised, multi-asset basis. There has been a significant shift towards shared service models with firms capitalising on the scale, efficiencies and best-practices available through SaaS and BPO services. And in response to the growing prevalence and sophistication of cyber attacks, it’s reassuring to know that firms can now transform their defences through a range of options, including secure, immutable storage which in turn enables the fast-track restoration of services.

There are, of course, many other examples. I’m a particularly strong advocate of the advances in investor service provision, and in Europe I have witnessed this in several ways. Key amongst these is the drive for higher standards of corporate governance, and the EU’s updated Shareholder Rights Directive (SRDII) which came into force in September 2020 has led to a significant increase in proxy voting service provision. Another example is the growth in class action services, and I applaud the ability of those firms who are now better equipped to claim entitlements on behalf of their clients.

What were some career highlights?
I like to think of myself as a market-centric “people person”, so I’m especially pleased to have met and worked with so many engaging and genuinely likeable industry contacts throughout my career – including of course my wonderful wife Kristina, now a university lecturer but who I met in the late 1990s when she was a budding financial journalist breaking news about capital markets tech and ops.

I also found it immensely stimulating when meeting senior managers at client firms to learn more about the measurable business value that they derived from the fintech solutions that my team was marketing. For example, conversations about the trade lifecycle gave me clear and unequivocal proof points about how firms were able to transform and capture new revenue streams while simultaneously improving efficiency and mitigating risk.

What were some challenges?
I take the view that it’s important for us to be challenged in our regular day-to-day activities, both as a stimulating form of motivation and engagement, and as an underlying way to grow and extend our expertise. I always took great satisfaction by responding to the challenge of learning all about a new market, the nuances of a new asset class, the impact of a new mandatory change and the transformational capabilities of technical advances such as AI and tokenisation.

Who were some of your most influential colleagues/mentors?
I’ve never knowingly had a formal mentor, but I have always been fundamentally committed to continuous learning and development, and of course my colleagues have always been a valuable source. Of particular note, Broadridge’s executive team, led by CEO Tim Gokey and its president, Chris Perry, has been an inspirational source of strategic leadership and guidance throughout my tenure. I also feel privileged to have been a member of the firm’s marketing leadership team – a truly stand-out group of talented and knowledgeable senior managers whose modus operandi is founded on impactful collaboration and collective success, ultimately helping to drive value for clients across markets and segments.

What advice would you give young people starting out in the business today?
Given the discernible, and of course appropriate rigour of today’s recruitment processes, my first message to a new starter is “congratulations,” and “you deserve to have a good degree of confidence in yourself.” That aside, I encourage people to turn up with drive, energy and enthusiasm. Be inquisitive, find a way to learn at pace. Engage, seek advice, voice your informed opinions and don’t let fear of mistakes hold you back. Build relationships and grow your network. And although views on this may differ depending on the nature of the role, I would always encourage people starting out in the business to be office-based as much as possible.

What are your plans for the future?
Extending my focus to a range of activities across the arts and humanities, including some new areas of learning — languages, music and literature to give a few examples.

For languages, first up is French, which I worked on a lot in the early 1990s but need to refresh. Then it’s a toss up between Italian or Spanish.

In music, I’m a big fan of the DJ Gilles Peterson and pretty much everything he plays, including most types of modern jazz. I currently have tickets to see Jazzanova, and also David Byrne (formerly lead singer of Talking Heads).

Books I’m interested in are mostly related to the early phases of American literature. I’m currently reading John Matteson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning bio of Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May, titled Eden’s Outcasts. Next up is Walden by Henry David Thoreau which has the underlying theme of ‘living deliberately’, which I think will have added resonance given that I am newly retired.

There’s also plenty of scope to step up my fitness regime – early days, but already loving my introduction to padel tennis, and fingers crossed that I haven’t left it too late to knock a few seconds off my 5k running time. But above everything else, my main priority will be to see more of my family and friends, both across the UK and overseas.