Ruth Handcock has always been an entrepreneur at heart.
“Entrepreneurialism is something that has been a thread [through my career], more so than anything else, but it has manifested in lots of ways,” the former CEO of Octopus Investments tells me as we sit down in the firm’s head office in Holborn. The office is modern and airy, and the walls and furniture are cleverly adorned with tentacular artwork.
Handcock’s background is unusual for someone who works in financial services. She started off in the media, which delights me.
“I’m a scientist by education. My first full-time job was editing a science journal that was catchily titled Current Opinion In Investigational Drugs. I loved it, actually.”
We need to behave in the way that a company would if it was going to change the world
For the next eight years Handcock worked as a consultant, first in the public sector and then in the private sector, she says.
“I worked in very small, entrepreneurial consultancies. The first had six people; the second had about 50 but had been set up by a couple of entrepreneurs straight out of uni.”
Handcock says she found working in this sort of environment enabled her to “take control of my own destiny” much more quickly than if she had worked in larger organisations.
“When I was 27 or 28 I was running a team, working with lots of big financial institutions, hiring my own people and running my own P&L [profit and loss]. I found that was the way I really liked to work. People who like disrupting industries like to be out of their comfort zone.”
Our role in asset management is to move money from places that have it to places that need it
Remaining out of her comfort zone, Handcock then lived in West Africa for a year, working within the Ministry of Trade in Sierra Leone for a charity that former UK prime minister Tony Blair had set up when he left office.
“I spent a year working alongside Blair on everything from attracting foreign investment to simply helping them figure out how you run a ministry 10 years post conflict.”
Generalist to specialist
Handcock then made her first move into finance as a discipline.
“I moved to Bacardi, the drinks company, as finance director of whiskey, cognac and Martini,” she says. “So I can talk to you a lot about scotch, and fortified wine.
“I realised at that point I was a very broad generalist. You get to a point in your career where, if you pitch yourself as, ‘I can do a bit of everything,’ that becomes less and less useful until you get to CEO level, when it’s very useful again. There’s this executive stage where you have to specialise in order to generalise again.
We’ll see more growth, more change and definitely a doubling-down on the themes that we care about
“I decided that the discipline that appealed to me most was finance. I thought about doing an MBA, but decided I wanted to work instead.”
She spent two and a half years as a finance director before realising that her heart was still in small, entrepreneurial companies.
“I happened to be introduced to two entrepreneurs — Matt Cooper and Ricky Knox — who wanted to start a bank,” says Handcock.
“At that point it was only really Metro that had got a new banking licence in the past 100 years, so I couldn’t resist trying to be the second. I joined them and we set up a bank called Tandem, where I was the first employee.
“We got our banking licence in that time when there was a lot of positive intent around wanting to increase competition in the banking sector. The theory at the time was: the way you increase competition is to create a wave of challenger banks.
Most advisers I see have a set of ESG or sustainable portfolios, and then a set of ‘normal’ portfolios
“Now we’re 10 years on from that. I think some aspects of it have worked and some haven’t yet. But at the time we worked very closely and collaboratively with the regulators as they were figuring out what a new banking licence process should look like.
“I was fortunate enough, as part of [the process of setting up Tandem], to meet Simon [Rogerson] — the founder of Octopus.
“I had always loved everyone I’d met at Octopus. They have this lovely combination of ambition and disruption, and a culture where everyone feels they can be themselves and achieve whatever they want to achieve.
The bit of the job that gets me out of bed in the morning is when I think about the number of funds we have invested into places that need it
“I actually joined Octopus more to work for the place and to work for Simon than for anything else. I was just fascinated by [the business], as I still am today.
“That was five years ago. I spent four and a bit years running Octopus Investments, and stepped down from that position two weeks ago.”
Making a difference
Handcock is proud of the way Octopus Investments offers products that make a “genuine difference to customers’ lives”.
She says: “When I talk to the financial advisers we work with, they are all trying to work with their customer to help them understand their money, live the life they want to live and use products to do that. It generally comes in that order.
We are incredibly passionate about investing in the people, industries and companies that we think will change the world
“And that’s one of the big changes I’ve seen during my time in the industry. In the past, financial advisers had a reputation as being a place to go for products. Now, the majority of advisers are planning led. They’re trying to work with their clients to help them get the most out of their money.”
Handcock says Octopus Investments’ products are some of the most powerful she has come across in their ability to get customers “closer to where they want to get to”.
She is also proud of the way she has continued to build the business that Rogerson conceived.
“We win the five-star Financial Adviser Service Awards every year because customers like working with us.
“The bit of the job that gets me out of bed in the morning is when I think about the number of funds we have invested into places that need it.
I spent a year in Sierra Leone, working alongside Tony Blair on everything from attracting foreign investment to simply helping them figure out how you run a ministry 10 years post conflict
“Our role in asset management is to move money from places that have it to places that need it. We hold that pretty dear.
“I think about the number of care-home beds we’ve made available, the number of kilowatts of renewable energy we’ve built, the number of entrepreneurs we’ve invested in. That’s pretty incredible.”
Applying for B Corp
It was this ethos that led Octopus to apply for B Corp accreditation in April 2021. B Corp requires a company to meet the highest standards of social and environmental considerations, transparency and accountability to balance profit and the impact it has.
How did Octopus find the process?
“It is tough, as I’m sure most people will have told you, particularly in a complicated group like Octopus. But it’s absolutely worth every second,” says Handcock.
In the past, financial advisers had a reputation as being a place to go for products. Now, the majority of advisers are planning led
“A lot of people go through the process and think it’s just a stamp they can put in front of their customers. It’s not. It’s a change in the way you run your organisation. And that’s what is so powerful.
“It’s hard as a manager to say, ‘We think you should care about where your money gets invested’ unless you as an organisation are behaving in the same way.
“So if we really want to invest in industries that we think are going to change the world, we need to behave in the way that a company would if it was going to change the world.”
This philosophy, she says, is shared between all the companies in the Octopus Group.
Handcock is particularly passionate about sustainable investing. This, she says, has moved forward a lot in the past four years while she has been at Octopus and she believes it is an area that will continue to evolve.
There was a lot of positive intent around wanting to increase competition in the banking sector. Some aspects of it have worked and some haven’t yet
“Four years ago, the answer I most frequently got when I spoke to financial advisers about sustainable investing was either, ‘My customers aren’t asking me,’ or, ‘I’d love to do this but I don’t know how to write the suitability report,’” she says.
“We’ve now moved to, ‘I think there’s a market opportunity for a subset of my customers and I’m starting to feel comfortable about how I can deliver robust advice on that.’
“Most advisers I see have a set of ESG or sustainable portfolios, and then a set of ‘normal’ portfolios. They’ve found ways to offer that to their customers.
“They wouldn’t have done that had people not been asking for it. So that’s a step forward.”
Mass personalisation
One thing Handcock believes will pitch sustainable investing into the mainstream is mass personalisation.
“That means asking not just, ‘Do you want sustainable or not sustainable?’ but, ‘What do you care about, and how do I construct a portfolio for you that manages risk return and preference?’”
But, she says, this is really complicated and cannot be done without sophisticated fintech.
There’s this executive stage where you have to specialise in order to generalise again
“I don’t think we’ll see financial advisers feeling confident doing that until something has filled the market gap to offer robust advice that passes the suitability process and creates mass personalisation.
“Unless it’s heavily automated, it just adds a lot of cost into the advice process. Anything that does that is unlikely to explode until there are better ways of dealing with it.”
Handcock revealed in February that she was stepping down as the CEO of Octopus Investments. Benjamin Davis, formerly CEO of Octopus Real Estate, was announced as her successor.
She does not wish to discuss her plans during our interview but it has been confirmed that she will remain within the wider Octopus Group to lead its drive to help more people get access to support with their money.
People who like disrupting industries like to be out of their comfort zone
And she feels certain that Octopus Investments will continue down the path she has set it on.
“We are incredibly passionate about investing in the people, industries and companies that we think will change the world.”
Ultimately, she says, Octopus will “continue to be an ambitious group of companies that care as much about breaking boundaries in the service of better customer experience as we do about anything else.
“In the coming years, we’ll see more growth, more change and definitely a doubling-down on the themes that we care about”.
SNAPSHOT
Name: Ruth Handcock
Age: 43
Family: Husband and two kids, aged five and six
Potted CV: I’ve spent the past four years as CEO of Octopus Investments. Before that I spent four years building the challenger bank Tandem as its first employee, following a career as a management consultant and finance director. I also spent a year living and working in Sierra Leone to advise the government on economic development.
Hobbies: Trail running, coaching kids’ rugby (despite the fact I don’t really know the rules), beating the kids at Uno
Best book: Currently, The Echo Chamber by John Boyne
Favourite film: The Greatest Showman, because it’s the film that got my kids to finally break out of cartoons
Desert island meal: I lived on barracuda skewers and rice in Sierra Leone, which should adapt quite nicely to a desert island
This article featured in the April 2023 edition of MM.
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