About us

2005

By the end of our first year we'd booked £43 million in trades. And by October that year we hit our first £100 million in transactions. In December the team had expanded to a hefty 8 members. And 7 of the 8 are still here!

2006

In January we outgrew our basement and moved to Crombie Mews in Battersea and used to enjoy meetings on our lovely roof terrace. That year we launched our Corporate desk with Alex Sullivan. Sir David Clementi (former Deputy Head of the Bank of England!) came on board WorldFirst as our Senior Advisor. A couple of months later Elisabeth Dobson joined as head of our Private desk.

2007

We started out the year with 22 employees and by the end we'd almost doubled, with 40 WorldFirsters in the team. Needless to say by the end of the year we were starting to burst at the seams. We also hit £1 billion in transactions and champagne popped!

2008

FSA authorisation was approved and we became the first foreign exchange broker in the UK to be able to sell currency options. We officially outgrew our old office and moved into our lovely new home in Regent House overlooking the Thames in Battersea. Nick Robinson also made the long long flight Down Under to open our second office in Sydney.

2009

Speedy automated payments? Done. In January we made the first of many SWIFT payments. Fancy some more champagne? Why not, we hit £2 billion in transactions. And a few months later we were awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise. In October our WorldFirsters turned up decked out in pink for Breast Cancer Awareness. The first of many charity days to come. November saw us authorised as Payments Institution as well as our first appearance on Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track - position 53!

2010

Things were really starting to take off, in January we were awarded our first star with Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For. We also launched our online platform (over half our transactions go through this system now!). We love an opportunity to dress up, so Sports Relief in March saw some "interesting" ensembles around the office. We also won the Service Business of the Year via the Fast Growth Business Awards and were finalists in the National Business Awards for Customer Focus. In our private client survey 98% say they'd use us again and recommend us! In November we launched our new look and appeared for the 2nd year in the Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track - position 65.

2011

We were on a roll - awarded our 2nd star with Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For - happy days! In April we hit £5 billion in transactions and Sir David Clemnti became our Chairman. In July, 100% of respondents in our corporate client survey said they'd use us again and recommend us. Third year in a row on the Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track - position 81.

2012

Ended our 8th Financial Year with revenues just under £15 million, a big leap from our humble beginnings back in 2004! In June we celebrated our first WorldFirst wedding - Emily and Simon met at WorldFirst in 2008. In September we took on the US with John Min and John Green opening our first US office in Washington D.C. We were announced winners of the National Business Awards Customer Focus Award in November and we teamed up with Childreach International to help build a school in Tanzania - go team!

2013

Started the year seeing stars - we were awarded three of them in the Best Companies Guide! At the end of February we'd made more than 120,000 payments, and in September, our Australian team moved into bigger, brighter office and @World_First reached 9,000 followers on Twitter. In October we opened our Singapore office and Jabu was appointed the MD. We also won the UK Customer Experience Award the same month. By December the global WorldFirst team had cracked 200 employees.

2014

This is the year we celebrated our 10th birthday! The years have flown by and we now have more than 300 employees worldwide. In May we took out the Customer Focus category at the European Business Awards hosted in Athens. Jabu opened up our second Asian office, this time in Hong Kong. In summer, the UK team said farewell to Regent House and moved into Millbank Tower, across the river from the MI6 (so James Bond!). In September we made our millionth trade.

2015

Another year, more new offices! WorldFirst’s story continued with our launch in Singapore, new offices in Hong Kong and Virginia, and a new frontier broken by setting up business in Austin, Texas. The awards keep coming with a place on the Real Business Hot 100 and a top 30 placing in The Sunday Times ‘International Track 200’. We visited some of our UK clients, and filmed their WorldFirst stories. From gin makers to home buyers, we heard some inspiring currency transfer tales (and came face-to-face with the biggest dog you’ve ever seen). And in the UK, the newest Mr. Man character – our very own Mr. First – hit big screens, billboards and adverts in tube stations, train stations and in magazines & newspapers.

2016

Our busiest year yet! Across the world, we transferred more than £8.5 billion to over 137 countries from Australia to Zambia. In June, we opened an Amsterdam office, our very first in mainland Europe, bringing us to a grand total of six offices and over 600 staff (more to come!). October brought our inaugural Think Global event celebrating the opportunities of international trade, supported by UKTI and attended by Parliamentary Under-Secretary for International Trade, Mark Garnier MP. We launched a new service to help international sellers to sell in Japan, signed a platinum sponsorship deal with the Sydney Roosters and received the prestigious Queen's Award for International Trade. And most importantly, our clients kept showing us some love, giving us 98% positive feedback which meant we won the Feefo Gold Trusted Service award three years running.