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Sophie
Ainsworth

Senior Insight Analyst

Smart Money People

With a background in criminology, statistics, and data ethics, Sophie Ainsworth’s route into financial services was far from typical: after graduating top of her class at Manchester Metropolitan University and earning a Lord Chancellor commendation for public service, she pivoted from academia to analytics. She began her career at Bridgestone and then Marston Holdings, where she taught herself Power BI and SQL to automate manual reporting systems. But it was her move to Smart Money People that revealed how her skills could make a tangible difference - using data to help consumers make smarter, fairer financial decisions. Now a Senior Insight Analyst, Sophie blends data science and social purpose to drive genuine change across the mortgage sector.

Sophie Ainsworth's story Back to the list
Sophie Sophie Smart Money People
Financial Reporter - 30 Under 30

2025

"I was drawn to financial services by the genuine difference data can make for companies and their customers."

Bringing a tech-focused approach to better business:
Sophie's story so far...

In just two and a half years at Smart Money People, Sophie has revolutionised how customer sentiment is captured, analysed, and acted on. She created two proprietary scoring systems that have redefined how mortgage performance is measured - one for product ratings and another for awards methodology - ensuring fairer and more accurate recognition of excellence.

She also developed an AI system to process thousands of broker and customer reviews instantly, replacing weeks of manual work, and built a spam checker and automated review pipeline, guaranteeing data integrity and enabling AI-generated summaries that lenders and brokers can trust.

She also helped work on the Mortgage Lender Benchmark, transforming a once manual process into an automated, scalable system now used by leading lenders and building societies - adding functionality to AI-driven dashboards which help lenders identify service gaps, improve relationships with intermediaries, and benchmark performance.

Outside of pure analytics, Sophie plays a cross-functional leadership role - guiding data strategy, mentoring colleagues, and bridging the gap between technical and commercial teams.

Sophie's career highlights

  1. Designed Smart Money People’s award-winning Mortgage Lender Benchmark data model, now used across the UK mortgage sector.
  2. Built AI sentiment analysis tools combining transformer models and machine learning, cutting manual tagging time from weeks to minutes.
  3. Created two proprietary scoring systems for product rankings and awards methodology, transforming how mortgage performance is recognised.
  4. Developed internal MySQL automation pipelines and review integrity tools, improving accuracy and efficiency company-wide.
  5. Advocates for ethical AI in finance - promoting a balance between automation and human expertise in customer decision-making.

Who else made the list?


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