Chris Bull

legal industry advisor

Chris Bull is the founding Director of professional services advisory firm Kingsmead Square, working with professional service firm leaders as a retained advisor on strategy, operations, transformation and delivering their business plans. He has a number of Retained Advisory and NED roles in the sector and is KPMG’s ambassador for the professional practices sector.

Chris has been a leading pioneer in professional firm business management for 20 years, with experience in legal, accounting, consulting, financial services and outsourced services organisations.

Kate Sharp

financial services and invoice financing industry advisor

Kate served as CEO of the Asset Based Finance Association from 2003 to 2014. She significantly raised the profile of invoice finance within Government which ultimately resulted in significant changes to UK legislation in respect of bans on assignment. Kate was also instrumental in setting up the EU Federation for Factoring and Commercial Finance (EUF) and was made an honorary fellow of the Institute of Credit Management.

“Financial services firms face the challenge of making sense of all relevant information available to them, and doing this in a timely manner and at reasonable economic cost. I believe that by using products from Encompass, firms can genuinely create value for their clients and their owners.”

Gerald Murphy

industry advisor

Gerald is an entrepreneur with a proven record in starting, growing, and selling successful companies. In 2005 he was a founder of City Park Technologies, a business process outsourcing (BPO) specialist, based in Scotland that grew to cover five sites and employ 800 staff before being acquired by Teleperformance, the French-listed company in 2014.

Prior to that Gerald was a shareholder and Sales Director at Telecom Service Centres, a BPO founded in Rothesay with 20 staff, and sold in 2003 with 2,300 staff and £32m in revenues to a Lloyds-backed management buy-in. His early career was in sales and management positions in US-based technology companies including Unisys and Tandem Computers. He graduated in Economics at Glasgow University.

Graeme Willis SF Fin, FAIB, FCIBS.

financial services industry advisor

Graeme has 40 years experience within financial services, holding Board and Executive Management positions with major European and Australasian Banking groups, including the following Executive roles:

• Group Head of Operational Risk with a major European Global Banking group;
• Chief Credit Officer with a major Australasian Banking group;
• Chief Operating Officer with a major UK Banking group;
• State Corporate Manger with a major Australasian Banking group.

His responsibilities have included membership of Executive Management Committee, Group Risk Committees and Group Lending Committees.

Graeme completed a Management Development program with Harvard Business School and is a Senior Fellow of Financial Services Institute of Australasia SF Fin, Fellow of Australian Institute of Bankers FAIB and Fellow of The Chartered Institute of Bankers (Scotland) FCIBS.

Graeme serves as independent non-executive director at Royal Automobile Club of Victoria and Victorian Teachers Mutual Bank Ltd.

Richard Jones

consulting scientist

Richard is Adjunct Professor in Computer Science at the Australian National University. He wrote his first significant computer program (to do his algebra) as part of his PhD. Throughout the 40 plus years since he has developed leading-edge software from research concept to full implementation with a particular focus on technologies relevant to intelligence and investigation, commencing in the early 1970s with the first intelligence system for the Metropolitan Police and research into major incident investigations for the Home Office. He is a member of the Transnational Research Institute on Corruption (TRIC) at ANU.

Richard’s previous roles include:

• Chief Scientist, Distillery Software Pty Ltd;
• VP Engineering, InText Systems;
• Chief Scientist, Computer Power Pty Ltd;
• Principal Scientific Officer, Harwell Laboratory, UKAEA.

He studied at Dublin University (Trinity College Dublin) and was awarded a 1st Class Honours degree in Mathematics and a Doctor of Philosophy.