Scott Firestone | Senior Product Manager.

The Problem

The client onboarding process for the Japanese market was severely bottlenecked, taking up to 20 days to complete. There was no Straight Through Processing (STP) process for Japan, leading to a high manual operational burden and significant drop-offs in the acquisition funnel.

The Execution

Selected and integrated Trustdock into the Passfort onboarding system to optimise the workflow. Managed highly complex requirements, with variations on journey based on customer choices of documents to use, mobile vs desktop journey, and risk assessments of applicants.

The Impact

• Slashed the average completed onboarding times from 20 days down to a few hours.
• Significantly increased the overall conversion rate from around 40% to 60%.

The Problem

The legacy retail onboarding journey lacked the dynamic logic required to handle complex, varying global compliance regulations efficiently. Significant technical debt in the old system necessitated a revamp before integrating third-party data providers.

The Execution

Led the vendor selection process (including POCs), architected, and rolled out a new rules-based onboarding system in Passfort across eight jurisdictions. Navigated the commercial relationship, leading contract renegotiations with Moody's to secure better terms.

The Impact

• Drove measurable increases in Straight Through Processing (STP), from several percentage points in mature markets to 40-50 percentage point increases in newer markets.
• Removed technical debt, achieving zero system downtime during busy periods.

The Problem

Manual document verification for non-government documents (bank statements, utility bills) caused significant friction in the onboarding flow, leading to user abandonment. There was no existing off-the-shelf solution on the market.

The Execution

Championed the early adoption of AI by running a Google Document AI Proof of Concept (POC). Tested and deployed a solution combining ResistantAI (doc tampering search) with Google’s Doc AI to extract data, integrating the flow into the Passfort onboarding journey.

The Impact

• New solution accepted by compliance teams, allowing faster manual onboarding.
• Championed an early example of applying AI for real business solutions prior to the Generative AI boom.

The Problem

The sanctions screening system applied uniform matching thresholds across all character sets, causing a massive operational bottleneck of false positives specifically for Chinese names due to their higher commonality.

The Execution

Investigated the underlying logic of the screening engine. Collaborated with a bilingual colleague to evaluate a large data set, established a higher matching threshold for Chinese names based on statistical impact, and secured AML agreement.

The Impact

• Drastically reduced false positives in the compliance queue for Chinese names.
• Added significant operational value; two days of effort resulted in an ROI of $40,000 per annum in saved manual review time.

The Problem

Following the launch of a new Corporate Onboarding tool (Fenergo), Product and Support teams were inundated with repetitive questions from hundreds of internal users, despite prior training.

The Execution

Drove the implementation of a specialised AI assistant (Fenly) for internal use to actively support users through the complex onboarding journey, applying strict guardrails around data sources for regulatory compliance.

The Impact

• Reduced messages and distractions for Product and Support teams.
• Improved understanding and autonomy for internal operations teams.

The Problem

Identified significant drop-off rates between initial user sign-up and account funding. Needed to understand why clients would complete the sign-up process but fail to fund their accounts.

The Execution

Initiated a '7 Whys' research framework involving quantitative data analysis and qualitative outbound user calls using a scripted discovery process. Shared actionable results across siloed Product teams.

The Impact

• Improved conversion rates from sign-up to funding for the targeted cohort.
• Bridged the gap between onboarding and payments product teams.

The Problem

Wanted to test the limits of modern AI-assisted development tools to accelerate the product lifecycle, while simultaneously creating an engaging project to mentor my son in product management.

The Execution

Conceptualised and deployed an end-to-end custom t-shirt web application (toonmytee.co.uk) entirely through 'vibe coding'. Orchestrated the UI build, integrated Replicate for image processing, and wired the Stripe checkout API.

The Impact

• Successfully launched a fully functional e-commerce platform within a highly condensed sprint.
• Demonstrated hands-on technical proficiency with cutting-edge AI tools and server-side workflows.

The Problem

Betfair wanted to introduce a trading concept for retail clients to increase in-play betting engagement. The target segment did not understand complex exchange concepts like 'lay betting' or manual calculations.

The Execution

Collaborated with UX teams to enhance the market view with the 'Cash Out' feature. Abstracted the complex underlying exchange logic into a clear, relatable UI that showed the exact financial impact prior to user execution.

The Impact

• Total number of bets per football match doubled for the targeted group.
• Established Betfair as an industry leader in this concept, which was subsequently imitated across the entire sector.