What does it take to be a high-performing VP of Product?

It was great to sit down with Alastair Pike, former Head of Product Management at CellPoint Digital (a leading Payments Orchestration platform), a few weeks ago to discuss how to get ahead in product and the latest fraud trends. Throughout his career he has worked for both large financial institutions like HSBC, Mastercard and Visa as well as fast-growing startups, and is a true expert when it comes to developing a strategic vision, building high-performing teams and scaling products that are used by thousands of users.

You come from a strategy and marketing, rather than technical background. How did those skills help you to build a successful career in Product?

My original roles involved strategic market and competitor analysis for companies looking to diversify and innovate within accelerated 12-month timeframes – good groundwork for Product! My first product role at Vodafone involved translating board level strategy through to concrete revenue generating product launches. This targeted Globally focused CTOs through a 2-year roadmap, including major technical/product development and launches within 3-6 months. My only way to achieve this was taking full ‘end to end responsibility’ for the entire product lifecycle, placing the customer opportunity and requirements at the centre of the collaboration with the technical teams.

What were some of the most challenging fraud trends or tactics you encountered throughout your career in FinTech, and how did your team effectively respond to those challenges?

I would call out two key experiences here. First, the growing incidence of Account Takeover and Identity Theft as Digital Commerce has expanded and opened up new opportunities for malicious fraudsters and imposters. For both I have actively collaborated with leading FinTechs in Fraud, Authentication and Digital Identity, with effective cross fertilisation across my teams. In each case new solutions have been built quickly through development of a FinTech Ecosystem.

What does it take to be a top performing Product Leader?

My ‘brand’ of Product puts the customer and markets at the heart of technical developments and innovation. Key to this is Vision, seeing the ‘bigger picture’ and longer-term ambition but most importantly being able to ‘bridge’ towards the ambitious market focused Vision through a roadmap covering the Short, Medium and Longer Term. This unites teams and focus across functions, with Collaboration the critical factor that Leaders must motivate.

What do you think is the biggest opportunity in FinTech which is being overlooked?

In line with the fraud trends and tactics above I see huge opportunities in blending together the disciplines of Fraud and Authentication with Digital Identity to reduce fraud and malicious system attacks but also to confirm ‘good’ customers and transactions. The key is in pooling Data , Analytics, Machine Learning and very use case specific Artificial Intelligence.