Entry & Judging

Sarah Williams-Gardner

Sarah is CEO at Fintech Wales

Sarah was a founding member of Starling Bank, the UK’s first mobile only challenger bank where she led Corporate Affairs. Formally Corporate Affairs Director at IBM UK Sarah’s interactions with Governments have been both as an employer/investor and supplier. Having been CEO at Opportunity Now when the equality bill was being amended she is an ardent promoter for diversity & Inclusion, acting as a role model to Dyslexics & women in business.. Prior to this as an IBM Client Director Sarah won many commercial deals implementing exciting new innovative solutions. She is a mother & farmers wife who is passionate about creating opportunities through education & innovative technology.

Andrew Probert | Judge & Co-Chair

Co founder Admiral insurance and Confused.com

A qualified chartered accountant, having trained with KPMG. Held significant posts with a number of insurance and financial services companies until becoming a founder director of the Admiral Group plc on it’s start up in 1992. 

Retired  from the Admiral Group in September 2006  but retains membership of a number of subsidiary group boards. Until 2016 was  chairman of the largest insurance company within the group based in Gibraltar, and now primarily involved in the group’s European and US expansion on a part time basis. 

His career has entailed significant time spent appraising new business ideas and investments and involvement in start-ups. 

He manages his own portfolio of private investments and acts as a business angel on a small number of mostly South Wales based SMEs, as well as being a backer, along with Welsh Government and others of the Alacrity Foundation based in Newport, which takes post graduate  students into focused groups, to educate them and help launch start-up businesses and fund their ideas.

Mark Walker

The Fintech Power50

Mark is an experienced technologist, his early corporate successes led him to form his own enterprise software company, producing and selling to Universities and institutions. A hands-on role, he executed this idea from concept to maturity, while also leading the international development for an advanced engineering company before its M&A.

A former Senior Adviser at UK trade & investment, where he used his time to build contacts in technology, IoT and Smart cities sectors, as well as the investment and accelerator environment. Managing a team of seven, his role facilitated a good understanding of the London technology environment. He then continued his passion for supporting Start-up and Scale-up organisations by joining London & Partners as Head of Financial Services & Business Technology. He also led the Mayor’s international business programme for the technology & urban sector.

Having stepped back into the private sector, He has continued supporting ideas, Start-ups and Scale-ups with several of his own investments and ventures, including working with an amazing co-founder on an exclusive Fintech accelerator programme, The Fintech Power50, and running the Operations & Editorial functions at The Fintech Times, a global multimedia news outlet centred around the world’s first leading Fintech newspaper.

Mark Evans

Chief Information Officer, SMS PLC

 Mark has over 25 years’ experience in architecture, IT operations, software engineering and enterprise transformation, including large scale Digital Transformation, through to contemporary cloud-based and open-sourced architectures and software engineering practices. Experience has been gained across a number of sectors, including Financial Services, Public Sector, Sales & Distribution.

Recently Mark spent 5 years as CTO defining and then delivering the digital strategy at Hodge Bank and has recently joined SMS-Plc as CIO, where is focus is on leveraging technology to help SMS in decarbonising the UK economy.