Opex Consulting taps Iress data lead

Former head of data science at Iress has joined the Adelaide-based financial advice solutions provider to lead a wide range of its ongoing initiatives to enhance efficiency for financial advisers.

Alten Hulme has joined Opex Consulting as head of enterprise partnerships and solutions, where he will steer growth of its next generation advice tool known as informed financial future (iff).

Hulme brings close to 20 years of experience across actuarial and technology across South Africa and Australia. He began as an actuarial specialist on pensions and researcher at Jacques Malan Consultants & Actuaries and The Wealth Corporation, respectively, in Cape Town, before taking on the role of actuarial analyst at Iress in Sydney in 2012.

He progressed through the ranks across his 14-year tenure at Iress, serving in senior roles including product manager, product lead, and most recently, head of data science for more than three years.

"Alten's actuarial and technical background, alongside significant experience in working with enterprise clients around advice technology means he is ideally fitted to support this role," Opex Consulting managing director Paul Campbell told Financial Standard.

"We have a number of material enterprise arrangements - yet to be officially announced - and Alten is responsible for ensuring the successful implementation and ongoing support and growth of these initiatives and ongoing relationships.

"With Alten's deep understanding of technology, enterprise strategy and the advice industry, we're excited about the value he'll bring to our clients, partners and the broader advice community."

Meanwhile, Iress thanked Hulme for his contributions while promoting Liam Bailey to the role of head of data and AI.

Bailey joined Iress in 2017 and brings more than 20 years of experience across technology, engineering, architecture and cloud.

"Over recent years, he has played an important role in shaping our technology and platform capabilities," Iress said.

"More recently, Liam has been leading strategic work on our AI tooling and technology direction."