Jonny Combe – Chief Executive of PayBy Phone UK

At the age of 20, Jonny joined the highly competitive BMW Graduate programme.

Following a number of promotions, Jonny was made General Manager of Digital and Innovation within BMW Financial Services at the age of 28, the youngest among his peers to reach this level of seniority.
In this role he led the team that delivered the BMW Innovation Lab, an award-winning corporate accelerator and the first of its kind within the industry.

He subsequently spearheaded the BMW Intrapreneur lab, an internal innovation programme aimed at fostering a culture of innovation within the business.

Having made considerable waves during his 14 years with BMW, in 2018 Jonny was headhunted at the age of 32 to become UK Chief Executive of PayByPhone UK, one of the fastest-growing digital payment platforms in the UK, wholly owned by Volkswagen Financial Services AG.

He has since delivered 30% year-on-year growth in a dynamic and constantly evolving industry.
Recognised in 2020 as “One of the UK’s top ten business gamechangers”, Jonny has been featured in publications such as HuffPost, The Economist and the Scotsman.

He has shared his insight and experience with a wide range of well-recognised brands, including Barclays, Disney, Asset Finance International and Baillie Gifford.

Jonny’s keynote topics include:

Innovation and Influencing

Anyone who has tried to “go against the grain” in a big corporate organisation knows only too well the feeling of getting nowhere.

Drawing on his experience of launching two award-winning innovation programmes of BMW, Jonny shares how he managed to navigate the “corporate immune” system that exists to kill off new ideas which don’t conform to the status quo, along with the learnings of what made both programmes successful.

Leadership

Jonny was headhunted to become CEO of PayByPhone UK at 32, taking on a brief to grow a technology business exponentially.

Drawing on this experience as a young CEO in the digital world, along with his 14 years at BMW, Jonny shares what he considers to be some of the key ingredients to effective leadership and exposes some of the “old school” leadership styles that dramatically hold back organisations today.

Customer

Customer expectations seem to increase year on year, meaning that resting on your laurels is never an option.

Jonny explains how understanding the customer journey is the key to engaging effectively with your customers, and how to ensure that your organisation’s offering remains competitive in an age when no industry is safe from the threat of digital disruption.