My name is James Redfern and I am the Sales Director and a member of the senior leadership team at Diligencia. I joined the company in March 2020, just prior to the start of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown here in the UK. After only five days in the office, we were asked to work from home and, as such, I didn’t have a chance to meet many of my new colleagues in person for a considerable amount of time. I joined Diligencia to help build our sales team, and support our sales activities and business development, but, as you can imagine, lockdown put the brakes on this.
I have been in the industry for 20 or so years, dealing with legal entity reference data, due diligence, know your customer, and anti-money laundering, and I felt that Diligencia was a great fit for my experience. Principal reasons for me joining were the fact that we are a relatively small company and I enjoy the benefits this brings, and because of the people involved in the business, whom I liked and I believed in their aspirations for the company’s future.
Particularly interesting to me was Diligencia’s primary focus on the Middle East and Africa, a region in which we stand out due to our unparalleled knowledge and coverage, and the broad scope of sectors we serve such as financial services, risk advisory, legal, defence, pharmaceuticals and many others.
What are your main responsibilities?
New revenue. As a sales director, I am all about generating new business, new subscriptions, and, particularly for us, subscription/ARR revenue. A key part of that responsibility is recruiting and managing our sales team, which has a global remit. In the four years that I have been with Diligencia, our sales team has grown significantly across two of our three offices.
Building relationships, speaking on behalf of Diligencia at various industry events and feeding back into our product development team and wider company about market changes, moving regulatory requirements and customer requirements are also part of my remit.
As a member of our leadership team, we meet regularly to discuss the strategic direction for Diligencia as well as ensuring we are providing a happy and productive working environment for all members of staff. Customer and employee satisfaction are paramount to our success and is at the heart of what we do.
What excites you most about the region we cover?
My great love for travel and foreign cultures stems from my childhood living abroad in several countries. Interestingly though, I had very little exposure to the Middle East or Africa.
The highly diverse and fascinating Middle Eastern and African regions that we cover have, to my mind, two key differences. The Middle East, especially the GCC, is a highly developed and developing region looking to diversify away from its legacy source of wealth—fossil fuels. Africa, on the other hand, is a young continent with vast resources and untapped potential. There are huge opportunities in both regions, and part of Diligencia's mission is to bring clarity and enable businesses to function more efficiently in these regions.
What do you love most about what you do?
There are many aspects of my role that I love; one being interacting with and meeting new people. Whether it’s with our customers, prospects, or networking with new contacts at events, building relationships is hugely fulfilling for me.
Working with people face-to-face cannot be underestimated, especially since Covid, during which the rapid adoption of Teams and Zoom kept us apart. The 'new normal' of hybrid working has its benefits of course, but nothing completely replaces direct contact.
I also enjoy working with my colleagues, many of whom originate from the region we cover. In fact, at last count there were 13 nationalities working for Diligencia. Their experience and knowledge both culturally and linguistically bring a huge amount of richness to our day-to-day teamwork but also, I believe, to our customers.
What excites you about the future of Diligencia?
Our focus is on improving efficiency and value for our customers by adopting innovative new technologies, increasing our coverage and by staying true to our vision - to encourage growth and support informed decision-making for businesses with connections to the MEA region by sourcing and curating hard-to-source, authentic data.
New technologies, including AI, offer exciting possibilities for us and are having a huge impact on our markets. AI can surface large amounts of relevant data and link it to create context in reports that would take analysts days to compile. However, AI is only as good as the data it analyses. Diligencia’s role is to surface that core data.
Are there any new regulations that our clients should be aware of?
Regulations continue to evolve, especially around anti-money laundering and knowing your customer. The focus is on identifying ultimate beneficial ownership and control and ensuring compliance becomes part of the normal business process rather than a periodic task. Compliance is becoming more real-time, driven by tech, data availability and AI. Diligencia brings clarity to these regulatory requirements, ensuring businesses stay compliant continuously.
What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
Work-life balance is important. I have three sons with different interests. One is a professional musician, one an engineer in the renewables industry and one still at university. I play the guitar and keyboard badly. Travel and languages is also another passion.
I also do some voluntary work. I am the chair of our local village shop and café, a Community Business Service, and I am a volunteer in the accident and emergency department at our county hospital. Additionally, in my spare time, I have been slowly restoring my 1972 Series III Land Rover.
