Jonathan Davis
Ingeni’s founder Jonathan is a father of five, a performer in both straight theatre and musical theatre, plays keyboard in a SKA band, and is generally the most enthusiastic and energetic person you will ever meet.
But don’t hold that against him! He’s also one of the most approachable people in the Compliance business with a genuine love of cars, the motor trade and the ‘process’ of selling.
His background as a business development and sales training specialist taught him that it was important to incorporate legal requirements into the natural sales process, making it easy to do things right.
His favourite phrase when talking about compliance is ‘if it feels clunky, you’re doing it wrong’, and that pretty much sums up the Ingeni ethos and approach. They make the complicated simple, and the process easy.
Spencer Estall
Spencer’s first job straight out of school was in a dealership working with cars. Not selling them but washing them! He moved on and tried his hand at being a postman, a retail manager for a chain of independent clothes stores, and then worked in the printing industry for 10 years, liaising with clients and advertising agencies. After a stint in advertising sales, he joined Ingeni in 2012 and found his true love there (his wife Cassie is part of the Ingeni admin team and had encouraged him to send his CV in). He also found a role that he loves. As Audit Director, Spencer looks after the on-the-road audit team at Ingeni and his role covers most of the customer-facing side of our dealer support services, including system demos and launches, auditing, and ongoing product and compliance training.
Outside of Ingeni, Spencer is a motorbike enthusiast who enjoys group rides around the countryside search of the perfect country pub and the perfect bacon roll. Spencer has a talented family – both his children are keen actors - and he is a devoted dad. After years of resisiting, he bought a dog for the children, and found himself turning into a doting dog dad too.
Becki Martin
Before joining Ingeni, Becki had a background as ‘something in the city’. She worked for Barclays bank, then joined the broking desk at PVM Oil, broking Brent and Dubai crude oil. It’s a lot more fun than it sounds and she loved working in the City! It was only when the daily commute became too onerous that Becki moved to a Pensions and Investments firm in Chelmsford.
She joined Ingeni 10 years ago as an administrator and is now operations director. Becki was the project lead for our Ingeni Transaction Manager system and was very closely involved in developing and testing it. She’s also responsible for the company’s accounts and MI, and with her team is responsible for customer care, claims, refunds, policy management and general administration. She’s very involved with our customers and considered part of the team by many of them.
Outside of Ingeni Becki loves exercise and fitness, and credits it with keeping her sane. She is a qualified fitness instructor and before becoming a director still taught a weekly class.
Vicky Armstrong
Vicky is our one-woman accounts department. She came to Ingeni by a very convoluted route and has probably had the most varied career of the whole team.
She started out in the Army but had to leave suddenly following an injury. With no Plan B in place, she took the first job an agency offered her, and entered the insurance industry ‘by accident’ for a short term maternity cover position…and didn’t leave! She worked as an underwriter at Hiscox and was working on new products for Hannover Re when the 2007/8 financial crisis hit.
As it wasn’t a good time to introduce new financial products, Vicky decided it was a good opportunity to try something new in her life. She moved to the Scottish Highlands where amongst other big changes in her life, she met and married a chef. They moved back down south where they set up a restaurant together in Wivenhoe, and had a couple of daughters. Vicky managed the restaurant for some time, but hospitality is not particularly family friendly, so she retrained as an accountant at a chartered accountancy practice in Sudbury and worked there for 3 years. She left to work for a motor garage / car rentals business and gained some insight into the automotive industry, which made it a natural progression when she joined the Ingeni team.
Vicky isn’t an Essex girl, as she comes from Scotland originally and lives in Suffolk now, but we consider her a local.
Roxanne Tibbert
Roxanne is a member of the admin team, and is our local expert, having lived in or around Earls Colne all her life. She worked as an insurance broker for a number of years before having a family and retraining as a chef. She combined raising her children with a series of jobs in local restaurants, catering firms and cafés, and undertook specialist training in Patisserie at which she excels.
As such it was a natural step to join Ingeni, as every staff member considers themselves a cake connoisseur, and all of us are particularly appreciative of Roxanne’s talents!
Roxanne got married in 2021 after having to cancel twice because of the Covid restrictions. She organised the event in just 9 weeks and had it the weekend after the restrictions were lifted, making it a celebration to remember for all involved. She recently moved into a new house with her husband and two children, and loves walking in the countryside, entertaining family and friends, and burning off any spare energy on her spin bike.
Cassie Estall
Cassie is one of the friendly yet knowledgeable voices on the end of the phone when you call in. With 12 years’ experience in the admin team and a background in dividend analysis in Asset Management at BNY Mellon, she takes a no-nonsense, no-fuss approach to problem-solving for our customers. Cassie’s has a well-developed sense of humour and is adept at providing an off-beat commentary on the oddities and inanities of daily life as a mother to two children.
Cassie is also an actor, singer and dancer. She’s played both leading and supporting roles in operatic societies across Essex, and has worked as assistant director on productions too, providing administrative and marketing support for many shows. Her dog, Ronnie, has on occasion joined the team at Ingeni as office mascot and chief meet & greeter.
Amelia Fancy
Amelia is the youngest member of Ingeni team – she joined us straight out of university in 2022, where she graduated with a first class degree in Business Studies, Leadership and Management. She works in the admin team and is one of the people collating management information for the dealerships and solving your problems when you pick up the phone.
In 2024, Amelia took and passed the first set of her Chartered Insurance Institute exams towards achieving her dipolma in Motor Insurance. We'll keep you posted as she progresses!
Amelia is a dog lover – she has a Labrador and a Springer Spaniel who keep her on her toes, and she loves socialising with friends and family.
Mark Fincham
Mark’s career has been extremely varied, starting on horseback while serving in the Mounted Life Guards Regiment of the Household Cavalry and then working as a Civil Servant, Money Broker and Estate Agent before he was seduced by the motor industry. He worked in dealerships across Essex for more than thirty years before joining the team at Ingeni and so has an excellent understanding of how to blend regulatory requirements into daily working practises.
However, Mark’s true love is the theatre. He’s been a performer since childhood, playing both lead and supporting roles as well as working backstage, on the lighting desk, in front of house and behind the scenes too. He has served as Chairman and Business Manager for Colchester Operatic Society and been a performing member in Braintree and Chelmsford. Those of us who have seen him perform will never forget his Sweeny Todd, although his favourite role was Frederick in the Pirates of Penzance – a 21-year-old ingenue who seems a long way away from the wickedly wise-cracking Mark that we know today. Mark has two grown-up daughters and, as you can see from his picture, a ridiculously cute dog, Tolkien.
Richard Williams
Richard is another car industry specialist and has worked in dealerships for twenty years in various roles, working his way up to Group Compliance and Business Manager. Joining Ingeni in 2022 was a natural progression for him and he was a great addition to the audit team.
Richard is a rugby fan who used to play regularly, but now only manages to play five times a year with his Veteran’s team. He’s father to five young men who keep him feeling young, and is a dog lover, with a pair of endearing dogs!
He lives in North Wales and makes the most of the spectacular beaches and mountains there. For him, the Essex countryside around the Ingeni offices is all wrong - it just doesn’t have enough hills!
Iain Robson
Iain is a member of the audit team, and like many in Ingeni, has spent nearly 2 decades working in retail vehicle sales, although he started his career in marketing as a direct mail specialist. As such, he understands completely how important it is to communicate with customers clearly, and he has the real-world experience of managing a dealership to help dealers build compliance into the sales process.
When not at Ingeni, Iain is an outdoor sports enthusiast, enjoying mountain biking, kayaking, hiking, target shooting, and camping. A more esoteric hobby is the Maori art of Fire Poi (look it up – it’s fascinating), and when he wants to relax, Iain is a keen gamer. He also admits that he’s a bit of a geek, building his own water-cooled PCs.
Ashlea Knight
Ashlea is part of the admin team, and she looks after those customers who need to make a claim on an Ingeni insurance policy. Her professional background is in Insurance, as she previously worked at LV and Equity Red Star Insurance, but she left the insurance world for a while to have a family. Fortunately for Ingeni, after taking on a series of part-time roles while her children were very small, she has now returned to the corporate world where her insurance experience is very much valued.
She’s a good fit with the rest of the Ingeni team, which is to say she’s friendly, good-humoured, and committed to making life easier for her customers. Ashlea loves socialising, planning events and parties, and eating out, although she’s not adverse to decamping to Norfolk regularly for a bit of downtime. The family keep a caravan there, and it makes a great base for holidaying with her children.
David Peddel
David’s background is in the motor industry. Before joining Ingeni he spent 16 years working as a car salesman for Underwoods, Vindis and Marshalls, so he is extremely knowledgeable about the day-to-day pressures facing people working in a dealership. He fancied a change but didn’t want to leave the industry he loved, so Ingeni seemed like a good move for him.
We knew he was the right personality for us when he said he thought compliance was interesting (it is, it really is!) and he liked the way Ingeni was focussed on trying to make compliance easier for dealers. Unlike many here at Ingeni, David isn’t into performing and he doesn’t own a photogenic dog, but his wife is a drama teacher, and he fostered dogs during lockdown. As such, he was obviously meant to be part of the Ingeni team!
David lives in Sudbury, in beautiful Suffolk, with his wife and 2 children. He’s within easy reach of the Essex Head Office, but is part of Spencer’s auditing team, so many of our customers therefore get to meet him personally.
Aimee Young
Aimee is one of the voices on the end of the line when you call into Head Office – she’s part of the Admin team. Before joining Ingeni, Aimee spent 5 years in Australia and worked as a hotel manager in Bondi Beach. Although Bondi is famous for its surfing culture and Aimee even owned her own board, she only tried surfing when she came home to England. As she says, the weather might not be as good in Cornwall, but the rollers are definitely less terrifying.
You might think that the hospitality and compliance and insurance worlds are very different, but Aimee finds that the two industries are quite similar. You need to be a ‘people person’ to work in both, be friendly, flexible, and enjoy sorting things out for customers. The biggest difference for Aimee is that unlike the Hotel she worked for, the Ingeni Head Office doesn’t smell of suntan lotion!
Aimee is a self-confessed morning person, who enjoys watching the sunrise with a good cup of coffee. She now lives in the pretty Market town of Halstead, making her one of our locals. She shares a birthday with her King Charles Spaniel. Aimee loves travelling, and anything outdoors or fitness related, with coastal walks a particular favourite.