Appointments: Islamic Bank appoints COO; new corporate finance partner at Smith & Williamson

Paul McMillan, Al-Rayan Bank

Birmingham based Al Rayan Bank, which is the oldest and largest Sharia compliant bank in the UK, has appointed Paul McMillan as its new chief operating officer. Al Rayan, which was established in 2004, provides Sharia compliant savings, finance and current account services to over 80,000 personal, business and premier customers.

Mc Millan has over twenty years of experience in senior roles in banking and financial services, including spells with Ulster Bank and RBS. McMillan has managed both banking and mortgage operations and recently completed a two year tenure as the CEO of Acenden, a mortgage service solutions business, taking the firm from 40,000 to 150,000 under his stewardship.

In his new role as COO of Al Rayan, McMillan will be responsible for all the bank’s operations including IT, change, first line risk and control, and his initial focus will be on bringing a strategic insight into how the bank develops technology and operational resilience to support its growing customer base.

McMillan said: ” My speciality is building effective strategies which support behind the scenes activity in banks. I have spent my career helping teams to innovate and develop, and I am particularly interested in working within the dynamic customer-centric team at Al Rayan Bank.”

Sultan Choudhury OBE, the CEO of Al Rayan Bank added: ” Paul joins Al Rayan Bank at a particularly exciting time: we are investing heavily into all operation areas to prepare the Bank for the next stage of its development. On behalf of the Board and the Executive Management Team I welcome Paul to Al Rayan Bank and very much look forward to working with him.”

Al Rayan is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and is a member of the UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme which guarantees customers’ deposits up to £80,000.

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Smith & Williamson, the accountancy, investment management and tax group, has recruited Tom Clamp from HSBC to join their Birmingham corporate finance practice as a partner.

Clamp held a senior position at HSBC where he provided debt support to a wide range of private equity and corporate transactions. Prior to joining HSBC Clamp worked at Deloitte as a member of their corporate advisory team.

Clamp said: “I am excited to join at a time when Smith & Williamson is focused on growing its scale-up presence. Having worked in Birmingham and the East Midlands with high quality private businesses I believe I can bring my experience, along with Smith & Williamson’s suite of services to assist businesses across the office network.”

Smith & Williamson partner, Iain Lownes said: “Tom and I have worked together previously and I am delighted that we will be able to build on the office success as we look to focus on assisting SME businesses scale up through better access to finance. We are now one of a select group of firms based in the Midlands which has a dedicated team founded on helping clients scale-up their businesses, having two senior corporate finance professionals will enable us to further grow our local business.”

John Hodgson, managing partner at Smith & Williamson added: ” Tom’s appointment provides a further boost to the strength and breath of the services we offer. He has an outstanding track record in the professional services arena and joins us during an exciting period of investment.”

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