Together’s CCO on what’s next: ‘We’re losing Elvis but getting the Beatles’

Last month, Together CEO of sales and distribution Marc Goldberg announced his upcoming retirement from the business, transferring responsibilities for sales and distribution to CCO Ryan Etchells, who has some big plans for personnel, as well as large investments into data and the online customer journey.

Marc is a true industry veteran, having joined the firm in 1989 and later being appointed to the board. But with his departure set for December 2026, it will be the responsibility of Ryan and the executive team to push forward without Marc’s leadership.

“I think the things that are going to be most difficult to replace are just the length of time Marc served in this industry, and his personality in the sector,” Ryan told B&C.

After Marc leaves the company, so too does the role of CEO. Together plans to spread the responsibilities across the executive team instead, through its appointments of Dave Sutherland as COO, Cheryl Brough as chief people officer, and Candice Lott in the new role of chief marketing officer.

Alongside these new additions, Tanya Elmaz has been appointed as managing director of intermediaries, in what Ryan explained was a recognition of her skill sets, determination, and knowledge of the market.

Building on experience

For Ryan, the executive leadership will now be picking up from Marc’s experience.

“His personality and his approach to business — we’re going to have to find a way to make sure that we've got the right team to pick those up,” he stated.

Despite the large task at hand, Ryan was excited to bring in a new leadership team, ready to take over from Marc after his departure. “It's like we're losing Elvis, but we're getting the Beatles,” remarked Ryan.

Under his and Marc’s watchful eyes, Ryan is confident about the leadership transfer.

“I think it's fair to say that one of the things Together hasn't been great at in the past is building those succession journeys and those transition phases… but this time we're doing it right,” he shared.

Finding the way in

Ryan acknowledged the benefits he had from a close working relationship with Marc for much of his working life. The pair met for the first time at a jobs fair when Ryan was leaving university, where Marc showed him that a career in finance wasn’t just for Oxbridge graduates; someone with his working-class background could also have a crack of the whip.

Having joined Together and the world of finance in 2007, Ryan believed that learning the ropes during the financial crisis was the most valuable experience. He also felt that leaving the firm in 2012 for a foray into high-street lending, as well as launching a bank to market, had given him a more diverse knowledge of the field.

“I've got a bit of a unique view of working in specialist lending and in a non-bank lender, because I've seen the other side of the fence,” said Ryan.

“I understand what ‘good’ and ‘not so good’ look like but, more importantly, I understand what makes specialist lending unique, and what gives us the edge to approach areas of our market that other people can’t.”

Data-driven decisions

One of the areas where Ryan is planning to give Together the edge is its online lending journey, through a significant investment into its technology platform, Nexus. The new platform will see a complete overhaul of the firm’s back- and front-end lending processes, including the implementation of a new portal.

With the system now moving from completion to testing, it will be rolled out to brokers for testing over the next few months.

“We want to deliver an experience for our business partners, our customers, and our colleagues that takes a lot of the administration burden away from our colleagues,” explained Ryan. “It will require less information from customers and business partners, but allow our colleagues to add the value where it's most important.”

In his pursuit of growth, Ryan highlighted how he wants the firm to make better use of its data. He explained that the firm had a massive back book of data, but it was not structured in a way that allowed for more understanding of the market.

 “We've got great experience of understanding the front end,” said Ryan, “but we need to use data more to allow us to build more innovative products, to allow us to meet customers’ needs better, to allow us to engage our broker partners in a better way.

“Data should underpin that; we should be using it to help us innovate, to help us really improve our service levels.”

By helping to structure the data, the new platform will allow it to be utilised for greater innovation, according to Ryan. “Nexus will support us doing that. As part of that programme, we are overhauling our data architecture: the way we collect it, the way we store it, the way we use it to make decisions and to provide insight. That's going to underpin quite a lot of our next phase of growth.”

‘A moment to be excited about’

While the onboarding of data, personnel, and a new system may prove to be some big changes in the face of Marc Goldberg’s departure, Ryan felt one emotion above all: “I think it's exciting. We should recognise this as a moment to be excited about.”