Bridging Borders: Bradley Rice on Innovation, Regulation, and the XB Adviser Journey

Meet Ashurst London partner Bradley Rice. He spearheads XB Adviser, our award-winning cross-border compliance platform. Bradley fused financial regulatory knowhow with 'product thinking' to devise the platform. In this interview, we explore how his team relieves the pressure on clients seeking to comply with complex rules by delivering a platform customised to their needs, which the client then uses to identify practical, scalable solutions. Platform users around the world have the team's insights at their fingertips.

Bradley, what are some of your most memorable moments at Ashurst?

There have been many! First, being instructed by Goldman Sachs to help build and launch their retail savings brand, Marcus UK, and then helping Santander to build their digital-first SME finance platform, Asto Digital. Both experiences came shortly after I joined the firm and proved a strong foundation for my partnership case.

Unsurprisingly, another highlight was making partner in 2020 – during the pandemic, no less! It's such a milestone of personal ambition, but to do it here, at a firm as collegiate and collaborative as Ashurst, was an incredible privilege.

Finally, more recently, we've won various awards for our innovative legal advice product, XB Adviser. It's been a real labour of love: what a joy it's been to take an idea that solved one client’s problem through to a market-scale digital offering that is now being used by our biggest clients!

You’re known for your passion for both financial regulation and new technologies. How did these interests come together in the development of XB Adviser?

For me, the connection between the two has always been a practical one. In financial regulation (and particularly with cross-border advice), so much of our work involves complex, repeatable processes. When we use smart, scalable technology to streamline those processes, without compromising on quality or judgement, we free ourselves to focus on what matters most to clients – insight, strategy, outcomes. That mindset was critical during our collaboration with Ashurst Advance to build XB Adviser.

What made this particularly rewarding was being on the journey with our market-leading and award-winning Ashurst Advance team. Collaborating behind the scenes during the build gave me a fresh perspective that stretched beyond my day-to-day practice. I saw how multidisciplinary teams design, iterate and refine solutions that genuinely change how we deliver advice. It’s been exciting and energising to shape something that marries regulatory expertise with smart, scalable technology in a way that reflects Ashurst’s culture and spirit of innovation – and I think our alumni will recognise that spirit immediately.

What challenges were you aiming to solve with this new platform?

I kept hearing that existing products were too generic and that pure bespoke advice was too time-consuming and expensive. I saw clients implementing workarounds by building internal matrices, overlaying multiple tools, topping them up with local counsel, all while trying to ensure alignment with internal policies. The process was time-consuming, laborious and expensive, and the results were often imperfect and rapidly outdated. I knew we could deliver a better solution.

How is XB Adviser different from other solutions?

With XB Adviser, we cover the widest range of financial products and activities. The platform allows you to overlay your risk appetite and policies and to automate tailored content for users in various entities and locations. This level of customisation means diverse frontline teams can rely on XB Adviser as a single source of truth. In fact, one client is rolling out the platform to 4,000 business users worldwide. That’s just not possible with generic solutions.

What’s been the response to XB Adviser?

The feedback has been incredibly positive. More than one person has said they wished they'd invented it themselves! What’s landing is the platform’s practical utility and its top-quality content, which is presented as legal advice that’s backed by a leading global law firm.

One client even asked whether we could integrate an end-to-end travel booking and CRM system into the platform. As much as I would love to turn Ashurst into a tech company and build the complete SaaS solution, I'm more than a few baby steps away from that!

Looking ahead, how do you see XB Adviser evolving? And what role do you hope it will play in shaping the future of cross-border financial services regulation?

The vision is for XB Adviser to be a truly global, living platform that keeps pace with fast‑moving regulatory change across products and jurisdictions.

We’ll continue using client feedback to shape the XB Adviser roadmap, including by adding even more jurisdictions (we already have 130+). We’ll expand its coverage and depth – for example banking, payments, digital assets and beyond – while strengthening configurability to reflect clients' entity‑level nuances, internal policies and risk appetites with precision.

On the horizon, we're also looking at interoperability possibilities, including potential integration with clients’ governance, workflow and reporting solutions.

For alumni who may be considering a return to private practice or a move into legal tech, what advice would you offer based on your own experience?

I think roles in law firms are changing – and there is so much more opportunity at forward-thinking firms like Ashurst. It's no longer about the billable hour. We are reimagining the ways in which we can deliver value for clients and how we can help them to work smarter.

If you hadn’t become a lawyer, what career do you think you’d have now?

I think I'd be running my own business or doing something entrepreneurial. It’s not really that different from what I'm doing now!

Follow Bradley on LinkedIn for more insights.

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