Payment Expert’s ID Check: Payments Professionals offers insight from industry leaders and experts on how they got their start in the financial industry, from their early years in education, to how they have been able to climb the corporate ladder.
This week, Chris Smith, Founder and CEO of BLOXX, reveals how a dual understanding of complex financial systems led him to aspirations of becoming his own CEO, but cautions a tale of perseverance, never giving up, and leaving an established industry to become “truly free”.
Where did you go to university and what did you study? What impact did this have on your current journey?
I attended university in Bradford, where I studied Business and Finance. This experience had a profound impact on my career and my family’s journey, and ultimately, it is what led me to BLOXX.
As the first member of my family to attend university, this opportunity established the foundation for a career in banking. Being exposed to a life away from the council estate allowed me to see the vast opportunities available in the world, recognising that a good education was the key that opened this new world to me.
Were you part of any sports clubs or societies at university and has this influenced your educational and professional development?
Not at Uni, but I did become the chairman of a local football club early in my career. Running a local, voluntary club situated at the heart of a community made me realise early in life how crucial community and purpose are for society. It also helped me understand how to successfully align people around a shared mission and values to make a difference, even when everyone involved is a volunteer.
This proved to be a critical developmental experience – though I didn’t realise its full value at the time – I later replicated this model when bootstrapping BLOXX for the first three years to keep the company mission-focused.
What was the first job you had in the industry and are there any lessons from this you still draw on?
I began my career in banking, working within the finance team. My strength has always been numbers; they seem to simply appear in my mind, guiding me toward the commercial answers necessary to drive a business forward.
The first three years in finance provided me with a crucial foundation in understanding how banks operate from the perspective of revenue, cost, and regulatory reporting. This experience became the basis for my entire career.
I then moved into leading product development within the bank because I wanted to strategically advance the business and create exceptional products and services for customers.
I was in a unique position: leading the product and marketing area of the business while possessing a full commercial background. This dual perspective meant I could rapidly deliver new innovations that improved both the bank’s customer and commercial outcomes.
Who was your biggest role model – inside or outside of your industry – who continues to inspire you in your current career?
My first CEO, Iain Cornish, was a key role model for me. He led the business through the 2008 financial crash, and I had the opportunity to observe his leadership firsthand before, during, and after the crisis.
Iain profoundly understood how to run a bank/building society and ensure that the risk-versus-reward equation was managed appropriately for the benefit of the customer. He was challenged for years to convert the building society into a bank and deliver riskier lending, especially as Northern Rock was being pushed pre-crash as the role model for how the business should be running. Iain knew that model was not sustainable, and we stuck to our core principles.
The thing that truly stood out to me was that when the crash hit and Northern Rock collapsed, Iain never once said, “I told you so.” He understood the implications of the crash for the normal person on the high street, so he immediately rolled up his sleeves and worked tirelessly, not only to protect our organisation but, more widely, to safeguard the UK banking system and ultimately ensure our customers did not feel the full impact of the crisis.
When was your first big break in the industry? Why was this such a significant moment for you?
Transitioning from finance to product, I did not possess a marketing background; I was known as the finance person. However, customer focus, strategy, and innovation are fundamentally at my core, and I am constantly generating ideas, both good and bad!
Being given the opportunity to move into product by Chris Edwards truly enabled me to flourish, as I possessed something nobody else did: a comprehensive grounding in the finance and commercial operations of the bank. I could now expand my influence, and my career subsequently exploded during this period due to the unique value I was able to create.
Was there a moment you faced in the industry that really challenged you? How did you overcome this?
The moment I realised my target of becoming CEO, which was the next promotion for me, was not going to give me what I wanted, despite having worked twenty years to achieve it, was pivotal.
The closer I got to the steering wheel, the more I realised I would only be able to amend the organisation’s direction by a small fraction. The system was simply too rigid. The ability to completely rethink how a bank worked for the average person and how it could solve major societal problems was not something I was going to be able to do, even as CEO.
That realisation triggered a huge mid-life crisis for me. Everything I had worked toward, and all the sacrifices I had made to reach that point, suddenly felt meaningless. It took me two years to fully come to terms with this inevitable outcome.
Ultimately, this led me to make one of the biggest decisions of my life: to leave banking, step away from the comfortable corporate job, and venture alone into the world of entrepreneurship, without knowing when I would next get paid, which is a big deal when you have 6 kids!
Despite the obvious nerves and risks of making this decision, I felt truly free and ready to build the new financial system, one where everyone wins.
What are some of the skills you deem essential to starting in your industry and how have yours developed over the years?
Resilience, experience, and patience are critical. Financial systems are complex and entrenched in everyone’s life, often more so than people realise. They are not built for innovation and naturally resist change, as their primary focus is to manage risk and maintain operations.
Therefore, to successfully change a complex system of this nature, you need to first understand how the current system is wired. This understanding is essential for creating something that can thrive for decades to come, to build a new financial system that not only grows and creates better customer outcomes based on future technology, but is also durable and continues to manage the many risks required to ensure our financial systems continue to operate effectively and protect customers.
To attempt to create these new financial systems demands patience, grit, and complete dedication. It requires the ability to hear everyone tell you this cannot be achieved, to have many doors shut down as the existing system acts like the Matrix, protecting itself.
You simply have to keep going for years, turning up every day, until the new world that you hold in your vision starts to take hold.
Lastly, what is some advice you would give to an aspiring person looking to get a start in your respective industry?
Do not rush, but do not give up. It will always take longer than you think, and the more sacrifice you are willing to make, the better the final outcome will be.
Nobody discusses how many years it truly took Netflix, Tesla, Apple, Airbnb, etc., to become the huge companies they are today. Everyone desires the immediate, quick result, but that is not often the reality.
If you want to create lasting change and make a tangible difference in people’s lives, you need to be willing to stick at it for as long as it takes, not knowing if it will ever work but make peace with the fact you are giving this everything you have.
The other crucial point is to ensure you truly understand the market you are attempting to transform and be 100% obsessed with why the customer needs and wants what you are building. This seems obvious, but so many people fail to focus on the end consumer. It must be about them; that must be your central mission.
Do not focus on building an exit; focus instead on the change you want to see in the world, and build your entire business around that!
