"The internal audit team is Link Group’s trusted advisor."
Christopher Dixon
RISK & COMPLIANCE, UK
Chris is a Senior Manager in our Internal Audit (IA) Team and works closely with the rest of Link Group to ensure our organisation and clients are protected from key potential risks – including financial crime, fraud, information security and more.
The key function of IA is to provide assurance that the control frameworks in the organisation are designed and operating effectively. This enables us to fulfil our legal and regulatory obligations as well as conduct our business in a well-controlled manner and mitigate key risks. The work of IA ultimately enables us to support connecting people with their assets, safely and responsibly.
Chris has been at Link Group for two years but has been an internal audit specialist for more than 20 since graduating from university. He initially joined us when he saw our transformational journey as an opportunity to help us adapt and evolve.
Although based in the UK, Chris is part of the global IA Team supporting our international operations. More recently he has worked hard to support the globalising of the IA function so Link Group can institute common processes and software, support the delivery of critical assurance and help to protect our entities and clients.
Chris and the IA Team have spent the last 12 months working together to create a unified global risk-based assessment model for Link Group, mapping out every auditable entity and a five-year audit plan. This is an incredibly complex task that provides assurance to our businesses and, by extension, to our clients.
Outside of work, he spends much of his time taxiing his four young children to gymnastics, football, the park and beyond. He’s a family man through and through – and most parents can agree that home-schooling throughout COVID-19 was certainly a new challenge!
Chris believes the ingredient to success is collaboration. Together with the global IA Team, Chris works closely with colleagues all around the world, to achieve the best possible outcome for all.
Jimmy O’Neill
BCM GLOBAL, IRELAND
"The key to success is looking ahead and anticipating our clients’ needs."
Jimmy is our Director of Asset Management in Ireland, leading our teams and supporting clients across bank outsourcing, origination, private equity, business development and marketing.
Jimmy has been instrumental in building a successful relationship with one of our newest clients, Avant Money, who appointed us in September 2020 as their mortgage servicer of choice. Avant Money is owned by Bankinter, a Spanish banking group, which is a leading mortgage provider in Spain, Portugal and Luxembourg.
Avant Money is the first foreign institution to enter the mortgage market in Ireland since the financial crisis, representing an important milestone for our industry. Jimmy is excited to continue supporting Avant Money on their course to becoming one of the largest mortgage lenders in the Irish market.
Jimmy focuses on building strong, collaborative client relationships and ensuring that we are their strategic partner of choice in achieving their objectives in Ireland and in other geographical jurisdictions Jimmy is a trained accountant with over 24 years of experience across venture capital, corporate finance, banking, mergers and acquisitions, corporate restructuring and more.
Outside of work, he has a family with three young daughters and spends his free time playing soccer and running. He has taken part in marathons across Europe, including Paris, Venice, Rotterdam and Dublin.
Jimmy believes the key to success is looking ahead. For Link Group, this means the ability to anticipate our clients’ needs. It’s crucial to foresee and proactively plan for client demand now and in the future so we can ensure we have the right platforms and models to deliver for them.
WORKING TOGETHER FOR A SHARE IN SUCCESS
“Pennon has always encouraged engagement with its customer base, so we’re proud to support them with this innovative new way to connect with their customers and shareholders.”
Richard Nash, Corporate Markets, UK
At Link Group, we embrace the challenge of finding new opportunities and new ways to help our clients achieve their customer engagement goals.
We recently worked together with Pennon Group PLC, a British water utility company and long-standing registry client, on its unique customer scheme, WaterShare+ – a five-year business plan to return approximately £20 million to customers and introduce customers as shareholders in the company.
We partnered with Pennon from the very beginning, participating in brainstorming sessions and meetings; taking the time to listen and understand their specific needs and goals for the project.
The project team involved our people from across a wide range of areas and expertise, including registry, corporate actions, legal, compliance, and technology. We brought together our knowledge and experience to ensure we provided the best solutions across all aspects of the WaterShare+ scheme, from guidance on what the service should look like and how it should operate, through to the online journey and call centre approach for Pennon customers.
Our regular and transparent communications and client focused approach were fundamental to the successful delivery of a dematerialised nominee service to 54,000 Pennon Group customers, who also became shareholders.
Delighted with the outcome, Pennon commented: “We have a collaborative working relationship with Link Group and we’re very pleased with the positive response we’ve had to this initiative.”
Gavin Taylor
Neelam Patel
Katie Gould
Jay Ruparelia
Darren Nicholls
Nimesh Desai
Neil Mazerolle
Richard Nash
Sofia Norrgard
Matt George
Haresh Hinduja
LINK INTIME, INDIA
“Believe in gratitude – be thankful for what you have, instead of what you do not have. Concentrate on keeping your clients happy, listen to their needs, and focus on the quality of the output.”
Haresh Hinduja heads up our Primary Market Team for Link Intime in India. He joined Link Intime in 2006 as General Manager – Primary Market and has played an important role in helping us maintain our position as the leading IPO Registrar
This year, Haresh and his team managed some of the largest IPOs in the country. Through a strong focus on our clients’ needs and collaboration with other intermediaries, the team delivered the highest number of IPOs in India.
Haresh has a wealth of experience, having managed India’s largest IPO to date – Coal India Limited in 2010 – and continues to spearhead the team’s efforts in this field. Over the years he has built strong relationships across the industry and continues to ensure Link Intime remains the first point of call for corporates looking to raise capital.
Haresh is also a Trainer at the National Institute for Securities Market (NISM) for Corporate Registry and represents Link Intime in various committees of the market regulator (SEBI).
In his spare time Haresh enjoys reading success stories in the corporate world as well as watching cricket and listening to music.
Anthony Ling
RETIREMENT & SUPERANNUATION SOLUTIONS, DIGITAL PRODUCT MANAGER, AUSTRALIA
“I am so proud to be part of such an important and transformative project to re‑platform our digital portals. The solution we have built will future-proof our offering and result in a lot of happy clients as they start to reap the benefits of having an innovative and flexible digital platform for their members.”
With 11 years' experience working at Link Group, Digital Product Manager Anthony Ling believes it is important to utilise human behaviour as drivers in the development phase for new technology. He believes it plays an important role in curating an efficient solution with a personalised and engaging customer experience.
Having worked in several roles during his career at Link Group from the administration team, to support, to the web delivery team and most recently in the customer experience & solutions team dealing directly with our clients, Anthony has gained first-hand behavioural insights around how members use fund sites and mobile, what they want to do and where the pain points are. He has been able to incorporate these insights using the latest technologies and data to deliver an uplift in service and experience for members as demonstrated by the launch of our new Member Centre eXperience (MCX) platform.
MCX is Link Group’s new member platform which replaces our existing Member Centre portal. The project focused on creating a market-leading member platform that empowers our clients to directly manage their site content and marketing updates via an intuitive and simple content management system. MCX delivers a simple member onboarding and account management platform with data driven personalisation to create a unique client-focused experience.
When a progression opportunity arose during the project, Anthony was offered the opportunity to become the digital product manager and is now developing digital strategies across the RSS business.
In his spare time Anthony is passionate about travelling and experiencing new cultures. Prior to the pandemic, Anthony enjoyed travelling to Cuba, Vietnam and Cambodia, where he was fascinated by the local culture and practices – taking his curiosity about human behaviour with him. He is passionate about working with other Link Group team members to move the dial on how we innovate and develop our solutions, bringing in new practices and new ideas to enhance the fund and member’s experience
GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION SPOTLIGHT: MUMBAI HUB
A central part of our transformation program, our state of the art Mumbai Hub in India has rapidly expanded over the past year to nearly 650 employees to provide services to our clients.
The Mumbai Hub has been designed to provide operations processing for a number of our businesses, including Corporate Markets and Fund Solutions, as well as technology services and some functional support services. As part of our Global Transformation program, the Mumbai Hub is key to our development of an integrated network that operates as a ‘follow the sun’ model to support our clients whenever they need it.
The build out of our Mumbai Hub has enabled us to streamline our operations, innovate our current operations and create new capabilities. The team has worked collaboratively with various businesses and other Link Group hubs around the globe to share knowledge and information and to transition services to the Mumbai Hub as seamlessly as possible while continuously focusing on identifying opportunities to increase efficiencies and automate manual work flows.
Our Orient Capital business is one example of how the team has been able to successfully support our clients. In FY2021, we transitioned some of our share register analysis, shareholder identification, compliance, research and proxy solicitation services to the Mumbai Hub. With Orient Capital onboarding 20 new clients since November 2020, 79 members of the team in Mumbai now provide support for this investor relations capability, augmenting our capacity and capability to deliver through two peak periods.
The Mumbai Hub has truly demonstrated our values and our ability to remain client focused, adapt to evolving client needs and collaborate to deliver for our clients.
Amit Rajdev
HEAD OF FUND SOLUTIONS, MUMBAI HUB, INDIA
“I believe that teamwork and group effort can move mountains. When we work together, we achieve great things.”
Amit is a member of our Fund Solutions team, heading up the Mumbai operations which support both the UK and Australian Fund Solutions teams, providing a number of services, including transfer agency, fund accounting, reconciliation and transaction processing.
FY2021 has been a pivotal time for the team, with a 50% increase in the scale of operations provided to the UK and supporting operations in Australia. The pandemic restrictions made the transition more challenging than normal, but the team showed great determination to overcome these, in part thanks to Amit’s leadership.
Amit joined Link Group in June 2020 with more than 18 years’ experience in various financial roles and a proven track record of setting up and running large operations.
Amit is now responsible for key operations for service delivery and he believes in keeping his team engaged and enjoys training the team to get the best outcomes for our clients.
With positive feedback from both colleagues and our clients, Amit has displayed relentless client focus in the way he works.
Outside of work, Amit is a family man who likes to spend his time with his children. With schools closed in India for more than 18 months now, he and his wife have their hands full. In his free time, he creates new recipes in the kitchen and watches Formula 1 and football.
Amit believes that teamwork and group effort can move mountains. As part of the global Fund Solutions team, Amit and his team are working to provide industry leading service to our clients with the aim of continuous, year on year improvement.
Mathew Eggins
HEAD OF TAX AND STRATEGIC PROJECTS, AUSTRALIA
"I thrive on solving business problems – simplifying the legal and financial requirements to deliver practical solutions. Link Group allows me to do this globally, providing me with great opportunities to grow."
Mathew joined Link Group in Australia in November 2017 as a Senior Tax Manager and in 2019, he became the first Head of Tax. Last year Mathew’s role expanded to include Strategic Projects. Mathew has always been passionate about demystifying the complexities and rigour of taxation, first starting his career in tax in 2002.
Through providing accurate and practical tax advice, Mathew’s mission is to help Link Group achieve our commercial objectives while balancing our tax obligations. In other words, Mathew has a strong focus on ensuring Link Group pays the right amount of tax in all jurisdictions. When Mathew’s not in the throes of tax, he’s working on major corporate activities such as an acquisition or divestment of a Link Group asset.
While finishing his Master of Taxation with the University of Sydney last year, Mathew worked on some significant global projects, including Link Group’s involvement in PEXA, and the divestment of Corporate and Private Client Services.
Internally Mathew has worked on setting up Link Group’s Mumbai Hub to help facilitate its Global Transformation, while also working through the potential impacts of Brexit to Link Group’s UK corporate structure.
Always ready for a challenge, Mathew says he enjoys working for a fast-paced global company, where two days are never alike!
Danielle Johnson
LINK FUND SOLUTIONS, UK
"Our customer service agents are at the heart of our business."
Danielle is one of our 40 customer agents who support our UK transfer agency (TA) clients and their customers every day.
She and her colleagues are at the heart of our Link Fund Solutions business. They act as the critical link and face of our brand for our clients’ advisers, customers and retail investors – often as their first point of contact. This means they require excellent people skills as expert communicators, quick-thinkers and problem-solvers.
After tertiary studies, Danielle worked in a call centre where she honed her customer engagement skills. She was enticed by the idea of joining Link Group in 2019 because of our expertise in finance and career progression support.
Danielle loves working with people. Since joining us, she’s built good working relationships with her colleagues and the advisers that she speaks to regularly.
Throughout local lockdowns, Danielle has supported new starters by assisting with their training and onboarding while remote working. She’s found it challenging to miss out on in person contact with everyone, but she and her team have worked hard to make the process as seamless and welcoming as possible. She’s also excited to return to the new Leeds office!
Kylie Turton
LINK MARKET SERVICES, AUSTRALIA
“Teamwork is important to us. We share our knowledge and experiences with each other, and this helps us to deliver the best outcomes for our clients.”
Kylie Turton manages our Capital Markets team for Link Market Services, Australia. Since joining Link Market Services in 2008, Kylie has worked with many of our clients on mergers, acquisitions, and other corporate actions, supporting these companies through a time of high pressure and visibility.
In capital markets, every project requires a high level of communication and collaboration with internal and external stakeholders, as well as a robust understanding of technical and operational processes, skills demonstrated by Kylie day in, day out.
Kylie led the successful implementation of the recent demerger of Endeavour Group from Woolworths Group, which represented one of the most significant transactions undertaken within the Australian market in FY2021.
This transaction was substantial in both size and complexity and was highly visible to the client and the market. Working within a tight schedule, Kylie remained focused on continually providing our client with updates and information to help them maximise the success of the transaction and achieve their strategic goals.
Kylie received positive feedback from Woolworths for her engagement and communication from the early planning stages right through to execution.
SPOTLIGHT: HOSTPLUS SERVICE EXCELLENCE CENTRE
When Link Group was appointed to establish the Hostplus Service Excellence Centre (HSEC) in March 2021, this was a huge step strategically for Hostplus and us. The transition needed to be seamless for a fund that is so focused on delivering excellent service to their members and employers, and would see us welcoming more than 100 staff to Link Group.
Our Client Partner Lachlan Allardice used his deep understanding of the client’s strategic goals to leverage Link Group’s developed solutions and help Hostplus establish this dedicated, tailored member and employer service centre and capability. With support from the broader team, the challenge was to deliver the solution during a lockdown that had the team working remotely and in just 90 days!
Lachlan joined Link Group in early 2020 looking for a new challenge after having spent the last decade leading client relationship teams in custody and banking. Lachlan’s commitment to working with clients and mobilising broader teams to help deliver solutions was evident in this project. Listening to our clients’ needs and partnering with them to provide the right solutions is crucial to developing strong and long-standing relationships.
The transition itself was led by Vicki Shields, Head of Customer Contact Capability for RSS. Vicki’s background in managing large scale contact centre businesses and passion for delivering a positive customer experience ensured a high quality, value adding platform was delivered.
A few days after the HSEC went live, David Elia, CEO of Hostplus, visited the newly established HSEC in our Collins Square, Melbourne office and stated, “It feels like it has always been here”. This was great feedback to receive and a testament to what had been delivered and how well the team had settled in.
A partnership approach between Hostplus and the Link Group team truly demonstrating our ‘Together We Achieve’ and ‘Client Focused’ values, resulting in a high-quality outcome supporting the client’s strategic goal.
Away from work, Lachlan has transitioned from playing a range of sports in his younger days to getting enjoyment from spending family time on his weekends watching his two daughters play netball and other activities.
Outside of work, Vicki sets herself an annual personal goal that ranges from completing her MBA, the Melbourne Oxfam 100 km walk to completing a photography course. Her dedicated mindset and experience, and Lachlan and Vicki’s ability to work together to achieve success, are major reasons why we were able to seamlessly deliver the HSEC within the 90 days.
Anastasia Crisafi
Richelle Manalo
Priya Natarajan
Matthew Berry
Lachlan Allardice
Vicki Shields
We ‘Appreciate’ our People!
When our People & Group Services team set out to launch our global recognition program ‘Appreciate’, our purpose was clear: provide our people with an easy and engaging way to recognise each other for living our values, while creating a common platform to show our appreciation.
Through Appreciate, everyone at Link Group can nominate and acknowledge colleagues who have demonstrated our values through a social media feed so everyone can share and celebrate together.
Our General Manager for Performance & Rewards, Marie Delaitre, says, “With the current environment, recognition is more important than ever. A simple thank you or recognition moment can go a long way in boosting engagement and making someone’s day. I’ve loved reading through the many recognition moments! They are heartfelt and a testament to the great work that happens at Link Group every day."
“It’s also been a fantastic opportunity to embed our Link Group values as all nominations are linked to our values.”
Teams from across the business – People, Risk, Communications, Information Security, and IT – demonstrated our ‘Together We Achieve’ value to deliver this new recognition platform for our people. And with a global project of this scale, it was inevitable the team would face some challenges, namely making sure all employee data was protected.
To overcome this challenge, cross functional teams worked together conducting a rigorous assessment of processes to ensure that adequate controls were put in place.
The results speak for themselves, with comments such as these from our people:
“Terrific initiative to motivate others and get motivated.”
“It’s lovely to see a recognition program launch – Elated!”
We’re excited to keep appreciating each other and to see this recognition program continue to thrive!
Introducing our new values
With our transition to a globally integrated organisation, in FY2021 we launched our refreshed values – Client Focused, Adapt and Evolve, and Together We Achieve.
Given the critical role values play in our organisation, this initiative was championed and led by Michael Rosmarin, our Chief People & Group Services Officer, together with our global executive team and senior leaders.
“We live and breathe our values every day. They shape how we work, our culture, and they unite us as a global organisation to deliver our purpose and strategy. It was important that our leaders set the tone in refreshing our values”, Michael said.
As a result, leaders from across the organisation were involved in developing the values and underlying behaviours, which were tested with focus groups before being finalised.
Putting the new value ‘Together We Achieve’ to the test, a working group representing our diverse global business units, global functions and geographic locations collaborated to develop a plan to launch and embed the values.
With COVID-19 and so many of our people working remotely, CEO and Managing Director Vivek Bhatia, together with members of the executive leadership team, communicated with our people via videos and virtual updates to reinforce their commitment to our values and why they are so important.
It’s been a success so far. This year’s employee engagement survey showed that shortly after the launch, the majority (77%) of our people felt they had a good understanding of our refreshed values.
Through Appreciate, Link Group’s new recognition program, everyone at Link Group can now nominate and recognise their colleagues who truly demonstrate living our values. The values are also being incorporated into Link Group’s performance goals for FY2022.
As an organisation we are now focused on embedding the values and living our values every day, in everything we do.
- We act with transparency and integrity in all our dealings
- We listen to our clients' needs and partner with them to provide the right solutions for them and their customers
- We are reliable and passionate about what we do, make good on our commitments and take accountability for getting things done
- We are resilient, embrace challenges head on and act quickly to respond
- We seek out opportunities, manage risks and learn from our mistakes and others to drive continuous improvement and growth
- We are empowered to speak up and constructively challenge to get the best outcome
- We work with our people, clients, stakeholders and the communities in which we operate to achieve positive outcomes
- We unite around a common purpose as one Link Group team, and leverage our global expertise to deliver
- We value diversity, and care about, respect and support each other to thrive and succeed