11:FS, the challenger firm defining and building digitally native financial services through technology, product and design expertise, has announced Michael Curds has joined the firm as Head of Talent.
He brings a wealth of experience in scaling digitally-native business, having most recently led the talent team at BCG Digital Ventures. Curds was employee number two at the firm and helped establish a highly successful business, building and leading a function that attracted and hired the industry’s top talent. Prior to BCG, he held a number of talent leadership roles, including digital media company PERFORM, audio start-up MusicQubed and Apple, where he ran recruiting for it’s EMEA operations.
At 11:FS he will be responsible for the planning and execution of the firm’s hiring strategy as it continues to build out its consulting, media, research and benchmarking, 11:FS Pulse and 11:FS Foundry teams.
“The work and the approach to client delivery at 11:FS speaks for itself. What really attracted me was the culture that has been built, how it is lived and cultivated the leadership team, and embraced by the entire company,” said Curds. “The opportunity to help scale the firm, while also being focused on maintaining and expanding that culture, is exciting.”
11:FS has delivered digital financial services projects for firms including NatWest’s Mettle business banking service, Standard Chartered, and other firms across Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. It is also building its own modular banking infrastructure, 11:FS Foundry, to deliver secure, digitally native banking proposition to scale and at speed, in association with Norway’s largest bank, DNB.
“When we founded 11:FS, it was with a belief that the talent we work with and the culture we create would set us apart from the current incumbents. Digital has created the shift towards ‘small team sports’ because we know that smaller, diverse team of specialists outperform a larger team of unmotivated generalists,” added David M. Brear, Group CEO of 11:FS.
“For me this means finding, attracting and hiring the best talent on the planet that’s aligned to our cultural values, in what is a highly competitive market. I’m really excited that someone of Mike’s ability, character and passion for talent and workplace culture that makes us proudly different, will be taking our Talent team to the next level. We have incredibly aggressive expansion plans and with Mike leading that team, I believe we will have no problem getting the right talent needed to deliver that growth both in the UK and globally.”
