Stoddart Advisory Group

Technology strategy · Product development

Strategy at the board table. Delivery in the codebase.

Stoddart Advisory Group helps organisations decide what to build, and then builds it. We work internationally and across sectors, usually at the point where a commercial decision and a technical one turn out to be the same.

Approach

The ceiling moved. Most organisations are still building to the old one.

Digital transformation and AI have moved the goalposts. A small, well-directed team can now produce what used to take a department, at a speed that would have been dismissed as unrealistic three years ago. The constraint is no longer capacity. It is knowing what to point that capacity at.

The advantage is real and it is specific: AI-assisted engineering that compresses a build from quarters into weeks, automation that removes the manual work a team would otherwise hire for, and modern platform tooling that makes the expensive parts of infrastructure someone else's problem. Used well, a handful of people out-deliver an organisation many times their size.

That is also where it goes wrong. Applied without direction, the same advantage just produces expensive motion. We have seen organisations ship faster than ever and land further from where they needed to be.

So the work is deliberately old-fashioned in one respect. Sound strategy first, then the tooling, then the discipline to produce the same standard of result quarter after quarter. Doing more with less is only worth anything if it holds.

  • Technology strategy

    Direction, architecture and build-versus-buy. What to build, what to buy, what to stop, and what it will actually cost to deliver.

  • Product development

    From concept through to shipped product. Discovery, specification, and an engineering function that keeps shipping after we hand it over.

  • AI and automation

    Where machine capability genuinely changes the unit economics, and where it is an expensive distraction. Then the implementation.

  • Platform architecture

    Multi-tenant systems, data pipelines and integrations built to carry load and to be extended by people who were not there when they were designed.

  • Governance and controls

    Security and compliance programmes, including SOC 2 and ISO 27001 readiness, access and role design, and the operating discipline that keeps them true.

  • Executive leadership

    Fractional CTO and advisory board seats where an organisation needs senior technical judgement in the room without a permanent hire.

Engagements

Where the work is happening.

A short list, on purpose. Each of these is a long-running relationship rather than a project.

Commercial

4Fi

Private credit · US

4Fi

4Fi is the infrastructure layer for private lending, giving lenders tailored underwriting and full-cycle loan management without an internal build. We hold the CTO seat across the group: platform architecture, data engineering, the AI and analytics layer, the security and compliance programme, and the engineering function that builds all of it.

Six operating brands · Physician, equipment, aviation, retail credit

Chief Technology Officer

FinMD

Healthcare intelligence · US

FinMD

A multi-tenant healthcare intelligence platform, live and serving customers. We built the proprietary scoring at the centre of it, drawing on more than 140 data sources, together with the pipelines that keep them current, the AI and analytics layer above them, and the security controls the whole platform runs on.

140+ data sources · Proprietary scoring · SOC 2 and ISO 27001

Chief Technology Officer

CoreX, Core Bank

Partner banking · US

Core Bank · CoreX

Advisory board member for CoreX, Core Bank's partner banking division. The work is strategy at division level: what a successful banking-as-a-service operation has to get right, how to sequence the build, and where the risk actually sits in partner-led lending.

Division-level strategy · Banking as a service

Advisory board

Applied LMS

Lending software · US

US loan management platform

Setting the strategy for a full-capability origination and servicing platform entering the US market, and participating in it directly. Product direction, commercial structure and the technical case for how it competes against incumbent systems.

Strategy lead · Equity participant

Strategy

Coming soon

Real estate · Scotland

Scottish property development

A development business the firm is establishing to route international capital into Scottish property, applying the same discipline we bring to lending: clear strategy, honest underwriting, and an operating model that holds after the first deal.

International capital · Development across Scotland

Founder

In formation

Board and community

Form Communities

Nonprofit · Texas, US

Form Communities

The largest Clubhouse in Texas and the state's leader in peer support, working in community-based mental health with services reaching across North America. Board member, contributing on strategy, technology and organisational growth.

Largest in Texas · 20+ years · Services across North America

Board member

Corstorphine Dynamo FC

Community sport · Edinburgh

Corstorphine Dynamo Community FC

A Scottish charitable football club and one of Edinburgh's largest. Committee member and senior adviser on the Tall Oaks redevelopment at Gyle Park, covering funding strategy, governance, and the political and stakeholder work needed to get a project of this size backed.

541 members · 34 teams · £2.9m redevelopment

Committee member
Senior adviser

Contact

Tell us what you are trying to build.

A short note is enough. If there is a fit, we will suggest a call. If there is not, we will say so and point you somewhere better.

lm@stoddartadvisory.com
Edinburgh · Working globally