London Tech Start-up eSwapp Teams up with St. James’s Place to Pioneer New Way of Learning

Award-winning London AI company eSwapp has joined forces with St. James’s Place, the UK’s largest wealth management company, to launch a brand-new skill swapping platform as part of its Digital Learning strategy.

The pioneering ‘eSwapp for SJP’ initiative enables SJP employees to search for and connect with each other instantly based on skills. It is a first in financial services, with such peer-to-peer learning adopted mostly by leading technology companies such as Google, where this method accounts for 80% of tracked learning.

Nicki Finnigan (1^st left), SJP’s Head of Digital Learning, leads this project from SJP. The wealth management firm is known for their forward-thinking digital solutions for learning.

Skills-swapping via the platform is illustrated by eSwapp in the following example: Fiona has an upcoming presentation and would go on the platform to search for someone who can teach her public speaking, in return for her teaching Advanced Excel. Among her matches, she finds Sanjay, who’s renowned within the company for being a great speaker and needs help with Excel for his work. The ‘public-speaking guru’ will swap skills with the ‘spreadsheet ninja’, in person or online, helping each other to grow their own expertise.

Traditionally, in order to find out what skills exist within an organisation, management has to conduct a skills audit, which not only requires multiple forms and surveys but only offers a snapshot in time of skills. Now eSwapp enables SJP to have a real-time and interactive skills matrix of all existing expertise, find out what skills are in demand and who has them, as well as establish where there are gaps. 

This project with eSwapp further strengthens their image of a modern business adopting cutting-edge digital tools to give employees the best learning experience.

Nicki Finnigan, Head of Digital Learning at St. James’s Place and leader of the project for SJP, commented: “I am passionate about delivering a world-class learning programme. This collaboration with eSwapp builds on the innovations we’ve developed and launched at SJP, creating and offering immersive learning and access to Virtual Reality training programmes.

“Partnering with eSwapp is part of a whole new approach to learning with an Agile mindset and an evolving blended learning experience for our colleagues. We imagine peer-to-peer learning through eSwapp platform to be an integrated part of our digital learning strategy.”

eSwapp’s Co-founder and Uyen Ngo (4^th from left, front row), with other tech companies representing the UK on AI, at the Residence of the British Ambassador to the Netherlands in The Hague.

SJP’s partner for this project, eSwapp, has twice been selected for the highly competitive government-sponsored missions GBIP (Global Business Innovation Programme) on Artificial Intelligence, to represent the UK on trips to the Netherlands in April 2019 and Canada in November 2022. 

Uyen Ngo, Co-founder & CEO of eSwapp, said: “We are excited to connect the SJP workforce to share their knowledge with each other, whilst giving management powerful skills data to inform their Learning & Development strategy. We believe this is the future of work, where learning is learners-led and interactive, and the data from these learning activities helps organisations to innovate faster. The partnership also epitomises what London is all about, a centre for finance and technology, because what could be more iconic than a digital collaboration between a world-leading financial enterprise and a tech startup?”

About eSwapp

eSwapp is an award-winning Machine Learning startup seeking to provide organisations with an innovative peer-to-peer knowledge sharing solution. While connecting the workforce to share their knowledge with each other on a 1:1 basis, eSwapp provides leadership teams with powerful skills data to inform their People strategy, such as the skills that are available, most in demand and also where the gaps are. eSwapp was twice selected for government-sponsored missions GBIP (Global Business Innovation Programme) on Artificial Intelligence, to represent the UK on trips to the Netherlands in April 2019 and Canada in November 2022. 

www.eswapp.com

About St. James’s Place

St. James’s Place (SJP) is a leading UK wealth management organisation. Founded in 1991, SJP was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1997 and is a FTSE 100 company with over £151 billion funds under management. The company provides face-to-face advice to clients based on their individual needs and circumstances, adapting the advice as requirements change over time to ensure that recommendations remain appropriate.

www.sjp.com