As a leading local fintech, EWG specialises in payments and currency services for the fiduciary, trust, and funds sectors. We caught up with Denis Philippe, EWG’s CTO, to hear more about their journey, recent projects, and what’s next.
Tell us a little bit about yourself, your role
I am Denis Philippe, I have worked in tech my entire career. I have been the CTO at EWG for almost two years, prior to that I was a Senior Solutions Architect at AWS, where I supported partners with strategic architecture and implementation advice for large enterprise scale projects. Before that I was the Head of ICT at the JFSC for just over 13 years. Out of work I am a ‘dad taxi’ and dog walker! I enjoy cooking to relax and am also a private pilot with over 300 hours.
For anyone who doesn’t know, what does EWG do?
EWG is a locally based fintech that specialises in payments and currency services for the fiduciary, trust and funds sectors.
How long have you been a member of Digital Jersey?
EWG has been a member of Digital Jersey for just over 18 months.
What do you like most about being a Digital Jersey member?
Having access to a great community of diverse technical and business capabilities, that are supported by an awesome organisation that cares about its members and supports them with facilities, connections and events.
What exciting projects have your team been working on recently? Have you got anything coming up you can talk about?
We have introduced over 40 new features this year and things aren’t slowing down! Major highlights have included the launch of our new Lightspeed API and corporate structure visual tool in our on-boarding solution. This has attracted a lot of attention from existing clients and prospects. We are currently working on spinning this out as a standalone SaaS solution to help organisations to manage their structure charts.
What has been a significant highlight for EWG so far?
Being able to take an existing business forward through so many great innovation led changes, supporting the team by challenging the norms on our onboarding, screening processes, introducing high volume client facing API’s and being able to deploy data visualisation and review tools that improve risk assessment and anomaly detection.
How would you describe EWG’s workplace culture?
Focused, innovative, curious. The team is always looking to improve processes and reduce wasted effort in tasks. With a small business like EWG, improving task efficiency through the use of technology, for both our clients and staff is really important in helping us grow.
What emerging technology are you most excited about exploring or incorporating into your services in the near future?
We are closely following emerging technologies that are starting to disintermediate the traditional cross border payment routes such as SWIFT. There are several alternative solutions that are starting to gain traction and will result in faster transactions, with less hops, and reduced cost. This will also improve the ability to trace and analyse the movement of funds from an AML perspective. We watch with interest how we can benefit and pivot these technologies to improve the value we offer to our clients.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to start their career in Fintech?
Don’t be frightened! Start attending events, reading blogs and academic papers and understanding where there are opportunities that you can put your skills to, to increase your value and that of a prospective employer or client. Then don’t be nervous, jump in.
Most definitely build your connection network on social (LinkedIn etc), get involved in some community events and find a mentor that will provide positive motivation as well as constructive feedback.
