About Us - All About World First

The markets never stop moving. And neither do we

We know that moving your money around the world means a lot more than just changing pounds to euros, or dollars to yen.

Every payment has a story. Maybe you're buying that dream property overseas - you know, that one with the gorgeous view that you can't stop thinking about. Maybe you're finally stepping off the treadmill and retiring somewhere nice and warm. Or perhaps you're building an international e-commerce business by selling on global marketplaces and collecting sales revenues in different currencies?

Whatever your story, we want it to have the perfect ending. We'll go out of our way to make that happen, and will make sure every payment has a happily ever after.

Look how far we've come

2004

Way back in April 2004 WorldFirst was born. In the basement of a house in Stockwell Jonathan Quin and Nick Robinson decided they were going to change how we change money. We also booked our first trade that month. And made a loss. Jabu Henson joined them 4 months later. He's still here as MD of our Asian offices, but more on that later.

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 aboard the good ship WorldFirst as our Senior Advisor. A couple of months later Elisabeth Dobson joined as head of our Private desk. December saw the start of our traditional team competition at our Christmas Party. The theme was "Strictly Come Dancing" with lots of tutus, Riverdancing and all round craziness... Check out the video here!

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! The Christmas Party saw our "YuleTube" challenge, the winners took it out with an Eric Prydz spoof. Definitely not safe for public consumption!

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. G'day to you! "FX Factor" was the theme of the Christmas Challenge and Marc Bertrand's team wowed and FX-ed up version of American Pie. Download and have a listen to the MP3 here.

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! This year's Christmas Challenge was a Dragon's Den and Apprentice Mash-up. Watch the winning idea here. Why this never took off as a real business will always be a mystery to us...

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! Thanks guys :) In November we launched our new look and appeared for the 2nd year in the Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track - position 65. The Christmas Challenge winner was a WorldFirst take on Alicia Keys' Empire State of Mind - amazing!

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 became our Chairman. In July, 100% of respondents in our corporate client survey said they'd use us again and recommend us!!! We were beyond happy to learn that! Third year in a row on the Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track - position 81. And some very questionable talent strutted their stuff at the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Challenge...

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, awww. 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 3 stars in the Best Companies Guide! At the end of February we'd made over 120,000 payments, then our Aussie team moved into bigger, brighter office and in September @World_First reached 9,000 followers on Twitter. Phew! Remember Jabu from back when we started? Well in October we opened our Singapore office and he's the MD. We also won The UK Customer Experience Award the same month. And by December the global WorldFirst team had cracked 200 employees! Our Christmas Challenge got social this year with each team making 15 second InstaVid #YuleTube.

2014

We turned 10 this year!!! The years have flown by and we now have over 300 employees worldwide. In May we took out the Customer Focus category at the European Business Awards hosted in Athens. Jabu opened up our 2nd Asian office, this time in Hong Kong. Summer time and we bid adieu to Regent House and moved into some fancy new digs in 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 just kept rolling in (not that we’re showing off!) 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 wonderful 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. Have you seen him yet?

2016

Our busiest year yet! Across the world, we transferred more than £8.5 billion in 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!

The team

We're one of the most experienced teams in foreign exchange. Even more importantly, we're a group of people who care and who'll pull out all the stops to make sure you get the most from your currency exchange.

Below you can put a face to the name of the WorldFirst management team. And learn a little more about what makes them tick.

View our Global executive team
View our Singapore leadership team

Jonathan Quin

Chief Executive Office & Co-founder

Graduated with Law and Accountancy degree from the University of Edinburgh. Started at Citibank as a trader and later headed the European sales of online FX trading products. Moved to RBS as the Head of Business Development in the Financial Markets Division. Co-founded WorldFirst in January 2004.

Mike Ward

Chief Revenue Officer

Grew up in Toronto and moved to the US to study Finance at Liberty College and indulge his passion for playing ice hockey. Most recently the Chief Executive Officer at OzForex. Joined WorldFirst in January 2015 as the Chief Executive Officer for North America and as one of our Joint Chief Commercial Officers.

Kerry Tremble

Chief Financial Officer

Kerry is Group CFO of WorldFirst. Kerry was previously Deputy Finance Director for Lloyds Retail Bank and a partner in KPMG’s Corporate and Investment Banking Consulting practice. In the latter role, he worked with global investment banks in a range of areas including Business & Operational Strategy and Financial & Risk Management.

Tim Rudman

Chief Operating Officer

Graduated with a bachelor's degree in Finance, Marketing and International Business in South Africa. Following a brief stint working in marketing, moved to London in 2007. Joined WorldFirst in 2008 as the desk assistant in the online sellers team before taking on a variety of roles including Head of Operations and, ultimately, COO.

Kelly Jackson

Chief People Officer

Graduated from UCL with a degree in Psychology. Went travelling around South East Asia and Australasia before starting her HR career at QAS Limited, a subsidiary of Experian Plc. Most recently headed up the HR team at Stemcor Ltd, a privately-owned international steel trading company. Joined WorldFirst as Group HR Director in November 2014.

Jeff Parker

Managing Director, Asia Pacific

Jeff was previously on the executive board at OFX – formerly OzForex – most recently in the role of Chief Enterprise Officer with responsibility for growing the B2B business globally. He also gained considerable financial services experience as a director at Macquarie Bank where he worked for the Investments and Advisory division. Jeff is also an ACMA qualified management accountant.

Peter Scully

Managing Director, Singapore

Peter has spent the larger part of his career building a successful payments business in Asia Pacific. He started with the Union Bank of Switzerland and thereafter moved to Bank One Singapore NA as Head of Treasury. He joined Western Union Business Solutions in 2002 as Managing Director for Singapore and Hong Kong and later promoted to Regional Division Director for Asia Pacific. He joined WorldFirst in March 2017 is responsible for materializing the growth objectives for the payments business in Singapore.

Richard Swainston

Head of Partnerships, Singapore

Richard relocated to Singapore in 2010 working in Wealth Management. In 2014 he transitioned into the foreign exchange and payments world; working for a start-up FX business assisting SMEs and private clients in both Singapore and Hong Kong. He joined WorldFirst in November 2015 on the Corporate Sales desk and moved to the role of Head of Partnerships for Singapore in July 2017. He's responsible for partnership growth and the acquisition of new clients across all 3 business segments through strategic partnerships and affiliations.

Sherman Leow

Head of Dealing, Singapore

Sherman joined WorldFirst in November 2013 and is one of WorldFirst’s first employees in Asia. He started out as a Sales Executive for China E-commerce and has since moved on to become the Team Lead of the Dealing Desk in Singapore. Prior to joining WorldFirst, Sherman graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Management and Marketing from the University of Newcastle Australia and is currently pursuing his MBA with The Singapore Management University.

Calvin Pang

Head of Risk, Singapore

Calvin joined WorldFirst in 2016 as Compliance Manager. He holds a MSc in Finance from University College Dublin. In addition, Calvin is a member of the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS) where he has acquired the Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS) certification in 2017. Prior to joining WorldFirst, he had a banking career with Standard Chartered Bank and United Overseas Bank.

Daniel Chua

Head of Corporate Sales, Singapore

Daniel graduated from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore with a degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2015, working as a trader right after graduation before joining Barclays as an Analyst. Daniel joined WorldFirst Singapore in 2016 as a Corporate Sales Executive, and within a short space of time made a huge difference, thereafter being asked to lead the Corporate Sales team. Daniel was a national rugby player, which explains why he runs hard and fast for his loyal clients.

Simon Hilton

Business Manager, Private Clients

Simon has been with World First since 2006 and has worked in the Private Client business in the UK as a dealer and team leader. In 2009 he studied financial services exams to became an FCA Approved Person for World First Markets Ltd and is qualified to provide financial advice on regulated products.

In 2018 Simon moved to our Singapore office to commence the role of Business Manager. He is responsible for evaluating and improving the efficiencies of the existing business streams, and assisting World First expand into new markets in South East Asia.

Stanley Lee

Head of ecommerce, Singapore

Stanley joined WorldFirst in May 2016 as a Relationship Manager to grow the Singapore Ecommerce business. He started his career in accounting roles with Barclays and Cargill before transitioning to Treasury sales with CYS Global Remit and worked his way up to become a Corporate FX dealer where he worked closely with SMEs and MNCs. Stanley graduated with a BSc in Banking and Finance from the University of London.

Duncan Khoury

Head of Marketing - Australia & Singapore

Duncan joined WorldFirst in 2014 and has over 12 years’ experience working in the Australian financial services industry. He previously held the role of Marketing Manager, Corporate & Global at Aon Risk Services and prior to this held numerous marketing and business insurance management roles over a 6 year period at Allianz Australia. Duncan is degree qualified in both Marketing & Law (University of Western Sydney) and also holds a Masters of Insurance/Risk Management (Deakin University), having completed the 2 year Allianz Graduate Management Program in 2008.

Jasmine Lim

Head of Client Relations, Singapore

Jasmine graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Banking and Finance (Hons) from University of London. She joined WorldFirst in July 2015 as a Client Relations Executive and has since moved on to become the Team Lead of the Client Relations team in Singapore. Prior to WorldFirst, she was working in operational risk management in Barclays and global fund services in Wells Fargo.