Welcome to Furmage Limited – Your Business Consultancy Partner

 

The company was formed in 2014 by Ray Furmage (Director), who, following over 13 years at Lloyds Banking Group working within the Credit Cards Department and Group Security and Fraud, decided to venture into the world of contracting. Over the past 10 years, I have worked with clients such as Barclaycard, TSB, Barclays UK, and The Very Group.

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At Furmage Limited, I am your trusted adviser in the ever-evolving landscape of the financial sector. With a wealth of experience and a proven track record, I can offer tailored guidance. Whether it’s fraud prevention measures, new financial products, or full-scale migrations.

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My expertise includes:

• Project Management: Project planning, execution, and delivery.

• Business Analysis:  Can provide or for bigger projects have contacts with a number of skilled analysts who can dissect complex problems, identify opportunities, and recommend strategies for growth.

• Product Ownership: Taking pride in shaping and optimising financial products to meet market demands and exceed customer expectations.

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My Recent Experience can be found below:

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The Very Group (Contract)

Product Owner / Business Analyst - Personal Loans Initiative                                                             Feb 2021 – Present

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Working with commercial and change teams to support a new personal loans initiative.

Working with the Engineering Lead, Delivery Owner, and Business Analyst, responsible for identifying and prioritising key requirements and user stories to ensure realisation of improved business and customer outcomes.

Responsible for ensuring that requirements are in line with business / customer expectation and needs whilst working within compliance and legal teams to ensure the new product adheres to any regulatory requirements.

Website development using Umbraco – HTML Website changes implemented in conjunction with lead BA to shape the originations web journey.

Supporting the defect triage support process for the QA teams ensuring that all of the facts are gathered and understood before raising to third party.

Providing User Story support between the business and change management teams to ensure that the requirements are understood and what Is being delivered meets the need of the business.

 

Barclays UK (Contract)

Senior Commercial Manager - Channel Management & Optimisation - Unsecured Borrowing       Jan 2020 – Feb 2021

 

Collaborating with commercial teams to ensure key projects and enhancements are implemented successfully.

​Providing User Story support between the business and change management teams to ensure that the requirements are understood and what Is being delivered meets the need of the business.

Responsible for live proving during the implementation and post live regression testing to ensure that the change is completed and that there are no operational issues.

Worked on the Covid-19 response for credit card customers which has consisted of the following:

• Developed detailed requirements to ensure they align to overall risk policy and risk requirements.

• Enhanced questions in journey to support customer affordability

• Implementation of a tactical income validation process for specific customer segments to ensure they are lent too responsibly.

From August 2020 I was undertaking a product owner role for a new optimised loans Journey across digital and branch channels which was fast tracked as part of our response to Covid-19.

 

IBM (Contractor)

Lead Business Analyst -     Unsecured Lending – Affordability Programme                                  March 2019 – Dec 2019

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Joined IBM as Lead BA to work on a Regulatory Project within unsecured Lending in the UK Cards Market

This was working for one of the top 5 UK Banks.

The project required a task force on urgent remediation activity that had a regulatory deadline.

This required a review of key regulatory documents like CONC and Consumer Credit standards to understand requirements and potential solutions.

Development of User Stories using Agile Central, Customer Journey maps and Designs.

Collaborated with senior stakeholders, compliance and legal across all aspects of the requirements / Design to ensure they could be approved.

Support to PM for general day to day including:

Create and manage project plan for specific BA tasks that fed into overall plan.

Support with building a new governance framework for the overall programme.

Stakeholder engagement

Chaired Daily Scrums / Weekly Project meetings when required.

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TSB Bank (Contractor)

Project Manager / Business Analyst (Hybrid) TSB Migration Programme                                    Nov 2017 – Dec 2018

 

Worked on the TSB / Sabadell Migration Programme for TSB’s Fraud Analytics / Strategy & Operations capability.

Managed and delivered the Fraud customer Profiles migration, working with third party suppliers (FICO, FD, and CA).

Managed Change Requests, which included an FCA related change affecting business processes.

Day to day BA support to Head of Analytics

Process Mapping and Operational Readiness Documentation

Delivered the implementation framework for the implementation weekends.

Assisted in building a framework with the senior PM to roll out post go live to ensure an elevated level of control and governance around immediate changes to provide safeguarding against environment issues.

Worked with the Senior PM to build out a change framework for Fraud, this included a governance model to ensure that all Change pre and post Migration was managed correctly with the correct priority and agreement. This included a Terms of Reference to ensure the governance was in place across the business and IT teams.

 

Barclaycard (Contractor)

Lead Business Analyst -     IFRS9 Programme                                                                              June 2016 – October 2017

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Supporting the IFRS9 Programme in all aspects of business analysis (planning, requirement workshops and review sessions)

Translated the Target Operating Model (TOM) and delivered detailed functional and non-functional requirements for the development team.

Facilitated engagement with senior stakeholders and managed weekly updates.

Support to PM for general day to day tasks including but not limited to:

• Create and manage project plan for specific BA tasks that fed into overall plan.

• Support with governance / compliance activities 

• Stakeholder engagement

Managed and delivered two quarterly IFRS9 trials across Retail and Commercial Banking that were being disclosed externally to the regulators. Key tasks for this included devising an ad-hoc plan, stakeholder engagement, daily checkpoints. I also facilitated the CRO sessions to sign off the output before they were sent to be disclosed externally via the finance teams.

 

Barclaycard (Contractor)

Lead Business Analyst -     Falcon 6 Upgrade Germany                                                            July 2014 – June 2016

 

Capturing High Level and Detailed Level Business Requirement’s

Co-ordinating requirements sessions with business, across global locations Germany, Singapore, UK, and USA

This included a trip to India to work with the Tech Delivery teams on the design.

Regular trips to Hamburg to work with the operations teams to detail requirements and review / document process maps.

Data Mapping Support – Providing input to the data mapping workshops and ongoing documentation support. This was crucial due to implanting an enhance API structure that required detailed mapping to ensure the product performed correctly.

Implementation Planning facilitated workshops across business and tech teams.

Support to PM for general day to day tasks including:

• Created and managed project plan for specific BA tasks that fed into overall plan.

• Support with governance / compliance activities 

• Stakeholder engagement

• Business continuity planning including DR activities.

Project transition from waterfall to Agile mid-flight, this was achieved evaluating activities where this transition was applicable.

 

Lloyds TSB (Lloyds Banking Group)

Project / Acting Programme Manager Group Security & Fraud                                               May 2010 – July 2014

 

Senior Business Analyst - TSB Migration (Fraud Transactions Operations).

Operational Design – Delivered a full suite of process maps / desktop guides
Interim Processes – supported each of the transition states
Core Fraud Systems -Supported and Delivered Falcon, Adeptra, AS400, CCTM & First Data Implementations.
Documented End User Computing applications
Testing - UAT, Live Trials and Dress Rehearsals
Implementation & Business Readiness - building the implementation plan, co-ordination of resources/ logistics and post live proving for five rehearsal events and the main live event.

Project Manager CCTM V4 Upgrade

Project Initiation - Plan/ Business Case/ Gate Board Preparation
Develop Product Proposition
Deliver Business Requirements
Supporting IT and third-party suppliers to deliver the technical design
Creation and management of Project Delivery Boards / Project Plans & Status Reporting

In addition to the above, the role also includes program responsibility for all CCTM related projects.

                                                                                                                                                                                           

Lloyds TSB

Manager, Fraud Infrastructure, and Integration                                                                          Jan 2009 – May 2010

 

Business Analyst - LTSB / HBOS Integration- Card Fraud Integration

Analysis & Design of Target Operating Model across both heritages

Capture and document business requirements.

Support Implementation events including feeding into, and documentation of, the approach / plan and co-ordination of four Dress Rehearsal / Practice Events.

Test manager for UAT / Live Trials Testing phases.

Documenting fulfilment Requirements and follow delivery, through third party supplier, to testing and live deployment.

Delivery of new Falcon Debit platform and Fraud Predictor

Complete restack of all Fraud Buildings to create more desks and update old infrastructure.

Relationship management with Fujitsu, Adeptra and FICO

 

Lloyds TSB

Manager, Programme Office                                                                                                        Jan 2007 – Jan 2009

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Duties involved conducting full impact assessments of new change and setting up departmental specific projects to manage the full end to end change cycle where Fraud were impacted.

As a Fraud SME the role would often involve documentation of requirements with limited business input and full representation of Fraud with external project stakeholders and IT suppliers.

The role involved full project life cycle support with an emphasis on Operating Model Change / Process Change Documentation / Testing (UAT) / Test Management and Execution support followed by Implementation Readiness / Management including Planning and post Implementation support.

Projects worked on during this period included:

• Upgrades to Falcon

• Upgrades to Adeptra

• VISA / MasterCard & Amex Scheme Compliance Releases

 

Responsibility for Departmental budgets equating to over £15 million.

Implemented Adeptra automated dialling solution for Debit cards saving over £1m per month in Fraud Losses

 

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