Senior Copywriter Joe Baker speaks to VP People Amanda Nuttall to find out how the company is supporting development as it grows.

FXC Intelligence provides data to some of the biggest banks and payment companies on the planet.

Delivering this data demands a strong, empowered workforce, which is why FXC has been growing recently. And it’s been growing fast.

With over 80 employees working in-house and remotely across 18 different countries worldwide, keeping track of everyone’s goals and giving them the support they need is a big challenge. So how is FXC tackling it? 

I sat down with FXC’s VP People, Amanda Nuttall, to find out more about what’s driving FXC’s growth and how it is adapting to support employees. 

Joe Baker, Senior Copywriter: FXC has grown rapidly over the past few years – what’s driving that?

Amanda Nuttall, VP People: Really, it’s been driven by our clients’ demands. We work with global organisations such as Visa, Mastercard and the World Bank, all of which have a real business need for what we do.

We offer a data and intelligence platform that is unique in its depth and coverage of the cross-border payments industry. This platform, alongside our highly experienced team, enables us to work with many of the leading financial services companies across the globe.

We’re listening to our clients, we’re responding to their needs, and then we’re able to provide solutions to help. That’s driven our growth and the launch of new products, which makes FXC a really exciting company to come and work for. 

Joe: With the company growing quickly, how is FXC adapting to support its staff and helping them develop?

Amanda: We are continuously listening to what our employees are saying using qualitative and quantitative information, to understand what our team members need, and constantly striving to make improvements around performance and development. 

Based on our employees’ feedback, we’re now using a performance management tool to give everybody visibility of their goals and how they are linked to the company’s objectives and key results (OKRs), which is really rewarding and motivating as they can see how their role contributes to the success of the company. We’re also looking to hire a Learning & Development specialist to help create internal development programmes. 

Aside from that, we’re giving managers training around growth conversations. We want the conversation to be: “We’ve talked about your business goals, but what about your personal goals? Where is it that you want to be in the future? And how can we get you there?”

We have transparent career frameworks so that we can talk about where people are now and what skills they need to fill the gaps to get to that next level. This helps generate interesting conversations around learning and development and helps ensure we are providing fair opportunities for advancement and compensation. 

We’re continuously developing and adapting those year-on-year, based on feedback and as the company has moved from start-up to scale-up phrase.

Finally, we celebrate successes with recognition programmes – such as employee of the month, where we send out gift vouchers – and we also send out gifts for recent promotions. 

In our engagement surveys, everybody talks about how they feel highly valued, which is great. We could always be doing more and we love new ideas for that!

Joe: FXC has a flexible working policy. How does that work and how do you make sure people working remotely feel supported?

Amanda: We say “work wherever you work best”. That depends on individuals and departments, so we’re not trying to do a blanket approach. According to our engagement surveys, employees still love that flexibility. 

We have offices in London and Washington DC available for employees who prefer to work there. Lots of team members go there regularly and we’re now considering expanding into a bigger office due to the demand for the space.

For some people, it suits their lifestyle more to work at home, but we do like people being closer to London as we meet up every month for company and department socials. We actively encourage that because it really helps with collaboration, as well as passive learning and development. 

For example, one of our analysts liked to spend most of her working days in the office, and while she was there she overheard conversations our commercial team were having with our clients. This piqued her interest, and when she started asking questions about what they did she felt it suited her personality. 

In 2023, she did a dual role across both departments to make sure the new role would be right for her, as it was a big contrast to her previous role. By the end of 2024, she transitioned to the commercial team and is doing exceptionally well. That is less likely to happen remotely. 

We have many team members working remotely and we have worked hard to help them feel connected with the business. They're included in the monthly meetings by video link and have one-to-one catch ups with the CEO. 

Joe: How are you ensuring that FXC has a diverse workforce?

Amanda: We did a survey to establish where we are and we’re actually doing really well! Our stats are above national averages. The leadership team is 50/50 men and women, which is fantastic, and we want to ensure that is maintained. 

We have the Women in Fintech group and an LGBTQIA+ network, which meet up regularly and provide a safe space to talk about lives and experiences.

We standardise our interview process to make sure that we're giving fair and equal opportunities to everybody. Everybody gets asked essentially the same set of questions. 

We're also looking at ways that we can attract a broader range of talent. But generally for a fintech business, the number of female to male applications is actually pretty much the same. 

FXC is embracing its diverse workforce, which includes people around the globe speaking 15 different languages. We're proud of where we are, but everybody can always be doing better. 

With diversity, actions speak louder than words, and so we’re going to be focusing on that moving forward, instead of just having a diversity mission statement that doesn’t really mean anything and can’t be substantiated.

Joe: That’s great to hear. Thanks so much for speaking with us Amanda!

Amanda: Thank you. 

Looking to find out more about what it’s like to work at FXC? Take a look at some of our previous blog posts, which include a closer look at some of what we do and what our employees love about working at FXC.