Zest unveils new chief product & innovation officer

Graham Meinke has been appointed as chief product and innovation officer of employee benefits technology company, Zest.

Zest’s employee benefits platform offers flexible benefits services for a wide range of well-known businesses across the world, including Hargreaves Lansdown, Taylor Wimpey, ADP and Travis Perkins.

According to Zest Meinke brings over a decade of expertise in product management with previous roles including Head of Product and Agile Practice at 10x Banking, where he streamlined product operations and coached the product teams responsible for delivering its cloud-based banking platform. Beyond this, he has provided his expertise as an independent consultant to various London-based fintechs, helping them to cultivate top-tier product teams.

Meinke rejoins Zest after four years after previously holding the role of head of product at Zest, where he was instrumental in designing the current platform enabling employers existing complex benefits programmes to be quickly and simply configured to deliver improved employee experience.

Zest added that given four in ten (38%) employees report difficulties with using their benefits platform, and over half (54%) reporting that they would leave their current employer if offered a better benefits package, Meinke will play an integral role in helping businesses and employees secure more value from their employee benefits packages.

His primary focus will be on driving innovation across Zest’s existing products and leading on the development of new solutions. Other responsibilities include improving seamless, technological integrations into an employer’s wider HR ecosystems and pushing the development of Zest’s data AI offering under the direction of the organisation’s newly appointed chief executive, Matt Russell.

The announcement marks the third hire to Zest’s senior leadership team, after Russell appointed Liliana Teixeira as head of marketing and Adrian Wilding as chief financial officer earlier this year.