Appmilla Appoints Head of FinTech Research

Lon Barfield joins Appmilla

Appmilla is proud to announce the appointment of Lon Barfield as Head of FinTech Research

Lon Barfield has joined Appmilla as Head of FinTech Research. His interests lie in the realm where design meets novel technology in the financial and legal sectors. In particular the good design of new services and what implications disruptive technologies have for society and business. 

As new technologies have emerged Lon has engaged and used them, and understood how they need to be designed. He was involved in early work with technologies including: CAD, print on demand, broadcasting visual data over DAB radio, laser printers, computer typesetting for books, blockchain, the web, artificial markets, grain of rice computers, and more.

With joint degrees in Computer Science and Physics and a Masters in Computer Science he has a broad technical understanding which enables him to learn and appreciate new technologies and their impacts, and he is skilled at communicating this understanding through books, courses and lectures.

In pursuit of this engagement with disruptive technologies Lon has conducted research at national computing laboratories (CWI, the Dutch National Research Labs) and at commercial research laboratories (Hewlett Packard Laboratories). He has also been involved with several start-ups in new areas of technology: CAD, print on demand, internet, blockchain.

“FinTech is a vast frontier land, with only a few roads into it. People believe there are huge riches out there, but also huge dangers. At this point in time we desperately need people to survey this new landscape, to work out what it’s boundaries are, what’s out there and to map the area so that it can be developed safely.” – Lon Barfield.

As well as labs and start-ups Lon has worked with many big-name clients helping and guiding them with engaging with new technologies: ABN AMRO bank, PWC, IBM, United Nations, ICAEW, BAM, Digicash, Canon, KLM engineering, Dreamworks.

Throughout all this he has sought to communicate what he learns through books and lecturing, including teaching on seven masters level courses in the area of design for new technologies. Several years ago he analysed what the next big thing would be that needed design input. It was a choice between AI and Blockchain. Choosing blockchain he went to work for a startup in the area and rapidly got involved in the academic lecturing side of the discipline. Currently he lectures into two FinTech Masters; The Masters in Banking and FinTech at the Ecole Management Normandie and the FinTech Masters at the University of the West of England.

“It’s fantastic to have Lon on the team, he brings such a wealth of experience and a personal fascination in FinTech, blockchain and emerging technologies. Knowing we have Lon on hand to delve deep into this ever evolving technical and regulatory space and to share that knowledge with the team and our clients is a golden opportunity for us.”– James Guest, CEO.

One area of design that he is currently engaged with is the dynamics of the international regulatory landscape in the design of services. Just as our cities are shaped not by building technologies but by planning laws so to is the world of FinTech shaped not just by new digital technologies but by the regulatory landscape those technologies reside in. New services have to conform to the regulations and the cross-border and cross-party nature of those services mean that the mix of applicable legislation is complex and dynamic. Maintaining conformance is a case of constantly hitting a moving target.

“I had a realisation that the design of services is shaped not just by new technology and user needs, but also by the regulatory landscape. As a result I want to navigate and map that landscape and to understand what it means for the future of financial service design.” – Lon Barfield

Lon enjoys the agility and challenge of working in start-ups and sees it as a good time to be joining Appmilla as they gear up for further projects in the rapidly changing world of FinTech.

“There are many startups and mature companies in the FinTech space that can do the tech. But Appmilla demonstrated a good understanding of the fact that tech alone will not solve all the problems. Appmilla have the tech but also an appreciation of the clients challenges and context and the fact that application of good design along with good technology will yield solutions that are appropriate, that meet expectations and that are sustainable. It’s going to be an interesting journey!” – Lon Barfield

Appmilla is on a mission to increase financial inclusion through the design and development of FinTech and Web3 apps. We’re working on rapidly building the team and forming partnerships in FinTech regulatory compliance, technology and services – please get in touch if you want to talk about how we might work together.