BUX Appoints Juha Ristolainen as Chief Technology Officer | LeapRate

European investment platform BUX has named Juha Ristolainen as its new Chief Technology Officer, bringing in a fintech veteran with more than 25 years of software development experience and 15 years in executive leadership roles.

Ristolainen joins BUX after co-founding Upvest, where he served as CTO and built the backend investment infrastructure used by several major neobanks and brokers across Europe. During his time there, he also grew the engineering team and worked through BaFin licensing requirements covering investment services and crypto custody. He most recently held the CTO position at Alpaca, where he oversaw the expansion of the broker dealer’s global API infrastructure and built out its engineering organisation.

Across his career in Europe and the US, Ristolainen has focused on balancing fast product development with the strict security standards expected in financial services. At BUX, he will lead engineering and product strategy, with a particular focus on rolling out the company’s new cross country savings offering.

“BUX has made investing simple and accessible, and now we’re extending that same clarity to savings across our markets, always built around what customers need,” Ristolainen said. “This is the kind of work that first drew me into fintech, and I’m glad to be doing it with a team that’s this curious and customer focused.”

BUX, a challenger brand under ABN AMRO, offers a mobile app for trading shares, ETFs and ETCs, along with automated Investment Plans. The company is now broadening its offering to include savings products, aiming to give customers a single app for both investing and saving. BUX currently operates in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria and Ireland.