Months after the departure of its Asia-Pacific chief executive, Ignition Advice has brought on board Darren Speirs as business development director for the APAC region.
Speirs will be responsible for driving sales and developing strategic partnerships to expand the firm’s presence in the APAC market, which it entered in 2014.
A former head of portfolio solutions at Bravura, where he worked for over 16 years, Speirs has more than 25 years of experience in wealth management.
He is the second Bravura alum to join Ignition in recent months following the appointment of fintech veteran Enda Mahoney to the newly created role of chief platform and technology officer in July.
In this role, Speirs will be based in Sydney and report to Eric Welsby, Ignition’s chief commercial officer.
Ignition group chief executive, Terry Donohoe, stated: “Darren has an extensive background in successfully delivering sales growth and building client relationships. His deep understanding of the APAC wealth technology market from advice through to member administration will be instrumental in furthering our successes in the region, which are a core part of our global growth strategy as the leading global advice technology for financial services institutions.”
Commenting on his appointment, Speirs said: “I am looking forward to working with the team to build Ignition as the market-leading SaaS advice specialist for institutions that need to quickly and efficiently scale their advice propositions across multiple distribution models.”
The appointment of Speirs comes months after the departure of Ignition’s Asia-Pacific chief executive, Craig Keary, back in March.
Shortly after, the firm indicated to Money Management that it will be stepping away from its regional model focused on countries.
Andrew Baker, global head of strategy and corporate services, said: “We’re not replacing Craig’s role in part because we’re moving to more of a functional than regional model.
“Ignition has two large European clients and we’re now starting to see activity ramp up further again in [the] UK, Europe and here in Australia with the Quality of Advice Review. We’re seeing high levels of interest and demand for the capabilities we supply.”
Outside of Australia, the firm has operated in Ireland since 2017 and expanded into the UK in May 2021 to offer digital advice solutions with the opening of London and Edinburgh offices.
