FOOTBALL star Ryan Bertrand has certainly been a big hit with fans this season as Saints broke their Premier League record and qualified for Europe.

Now the millionaire full-back is set to be a big player in the financial world.

The footballer has joined forces with two other entrepreneurs to launch an innovative financial technology brokerage called Silicon Markets.

Left-back Ryan founded the company with Louis Bell and financial technology specialist Matthew Kirkham.

The 26-year-old’s interest in finance started at the age of 18, when he started trading with fellow Gillingham youth player Louis, who would go on to work in the City as a trader.

Ryan, who signed permanently at St Marys from Chelsea for £10million last year, scored in Saints 4-1 victory over Crystal Palace on Sunday and was named in England’s squad for this summer’s European Championship squad yesterday.

The company, based in Canary Wharf where it employs a staff of 12, is coming to the end of lengthy tests of revolutionary software which will give ordinary members of the public the kind of tech support employed by huge banks and hedge funds.

Ryan said: “I kind of wanted to go against the grain, the traditional footballer who reaches perhaps mid-30s, stops and then thinks ‘what am I going to do now?’”

He claimed Silicon Markets is “set to cause disruption to the retail brokerage industry” and could be “used to demystify the complex global financial system.”

Former investment bankers have helped develop the technology, due to go on the market in the next couple of months, which provides the user with an automated trading system so they can play the financial markets without sitting in front of a screen all day.

The trader inputs his strategy and the software takes over buying and selling shares, stocks or currency when they reach the pre-programmed prices.

Unlike a human being it won’t miss the optimum moment to trade because it’s asleep or in the bathroom.

The user can even test his strategy using fake money.

Silicon Markets’ Luca Sculley said: “The system allows the individual to trade in the way a hedge fund would and to use algorithms without having to go to school.”

The company claim they are the first brokerage to have developed such an easy to use system for the day trader.

The brokerage is not Ryan’s only business venture.

He has teamed up with his former Chelsea team mate and ex-England captain John Terry to produce Footiemoji – the electronic equivalent of football stickers.

It allows users to buy football themed emoji packs for mobile messaging.