Neil Blagden Email Address

Chief Operating Officer and Managing Director Cornerstone

Finastra provides the broadest portfolio of financial services software.

An experienced, board-level, commercial, operational, and digital leader having transformed and managed large-scale businesses at some of the world’s leading organisations. Having worked across multiple sectors I have generated a deep understanding of customer, digital and commercial environments which has enabled me to drive sustainable improvements in top-line, margin, and customer experience. In the first part of my career, I worked for three of the world’s leading professional services organizations, starting as a graduate with Accenture and progressing to Senior Manager within the Comms & High-Tech practice. After which I joined EY, to lead their Sales & Channels practice, before moving to PwC to lead their EMEA Customer Experience practice. In 2012, I moved into industry joining Direct Line Group (DLG) as their Director of Business Services, responsible for customer service and transformation. During my 4 years at DLG, my role expanded to include customer experience, conduct and digital service. In 2015, I joined Vodafone UK’s Exco as their Director of Operations, Customer Service & Digital with responsibility for operations, customer experience, billing, collections, transformation and digital for 24m consumer and business customers. In 2020, I moved to Finastra, a global FinTech supporting 8,000 financial institutions in 132 countries, in a newly created EVP Exco role. Joining as their Chief Customer Officer, with responsibility for customer success, experience, support, IT, and cloud services. After 18 months, I was elevated into a new Chief Operating Officer & MD role, becoming a member of the main board, with my responsibilities expanded to lead four verticalized businesses, new business model development alongside our centres of excellence for customer success, experience, support, services, transformation, automation, and IT. Alongside my executive career, I continue to develop my non-executive experience. Firstly, as a Director for Second Woking Grange Management Company, a UK-based property management business. And second, as a Governor for Greenfield School, a leading co-educational preparatory school, based in Surrey. Specialties: P&L, Sales & Marketing, Customer Experience, Operations, Strategy (Corporate, Market, Customer, Channel, Pricing), Customer Service, Contact Centers, IT, Cloud, Global Delivery, Transformation, OD/TOM, BI & Analytics, Business Change, Workforce & Capacity Planning, Risk Management, Complaints Handling, Continuous Improvement, Lean/6 Sigma, Conduct.