About

Team size: 22

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last year?

The most important transaction the team has been involved in has been working with British Business Bank to become accredited for Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (“CBILS”), being the first fintech to become accredited, and negotiating funding agreements with various investors for over £1bn of funding in a very short period to ensure Funding Circle was an important part of the solution in getting money to small business borrowers struggling as a result of the pandemic. Also working with investors to ensure that we were able to implement forbearance measures for existing borrowers who found themselves suddenly in financial difficulties.

Has working from home inspired any innovation in terms of the way you or your team work? Are there any standout products or technologies you now use that you did not before?

The team has worked incredibly well both as a team and with the rest of the business to ensure controlled introduction of new products for new borrowers, introduction of forbearance measures for existing customers and negotiation of new funding arrangements in an extremely short and pressured time period. Non tech solutions have been team (both legal and compliance together) calls, initially three times a week and moving to twice a week as things calmed down. In addition Rob Kerrigan in particular has led the charge on optimisation of legal ops including a new legal workflow tool developed internally. Tom Parachini was also a key member of the team throughout everything we have done in recent months.

Even in the best-case scenario, Covid-19 is likely to have far-reaching ramifications. How are you safeguarding the long-term health of the business?

As a public company, our annual report which is due to be published in April will detail this . We are working to become accredited for the ongoing government guaranteed Recovery Loan Scheme announced in the recent budget and will also re-introduce our core lending product (in addition to introducing new products using our advanced lending technology platform).

How positively do you view the Brexit withdrawal agreement and are there any areas that you think future agreements should pay attention to?

We are not impacted directly as a business as we do not rely on passporting as part of our business model. However, we are watching carefully the impact on our small business borrowers as a result of increased cost and admin burden – particularly on top of the impact of Covid-19.