Ian Savage brings wealth of fintech and financial services knowledge alongside particular expertise in driving growth
London, 2 August 2021: Funding Options has added to its leadership team with the appointment of highly experienced Chief Financial Officer Ian Savage. This follows the arrival last year of Chief Technology Officer Aleks Kudic and Chief Revenue Officer Stuart Lawson, as the business finance marketplace builds a C-suite line-up for its next phase of growth.
Savage arrives at Funding Options with a track record of helping to build a series of fast-growth companies. Most recently, Savage was CFO for multinational SME wealth management technology company Finantix (owned by Motive Partners, a specialist fintech investor), where he oversaw the integration of a recent acquisition prior to the business being sold to Investcloud in early 2021. Prior to this, his experience includes tripling revenues at CashFlows over a three year period, taking Sigma Financial Group from a startup to a near £75m balance sheet, and a decade working alongside institutional investors at Anacap Financial Partners.
Since Simon Cureton became CEO in 2019, Funding Options has harnessed the power of Open Banking and data science to launch the first fully integrated real-time lending platform, Funding Cloud, in the UK. More recently, the team also launched its Green Finance Marketplace to help businesses achieve their sustainability goals.
PWC-trained Savage will help to accelerate Funding Options’ vision to be the leading platform for SME finance, capable of delivering fully digitally underwritten lending approvals in as little as 20 seconds, as was achieved in the UK recently.
Simon Cureton, Chief Executive Officer at Funding Options, comments: “Ian represents a very exciting addition to our leadership team. Having a CFO on board with a track record of director-level positions for fast-growth startups as well as companies with £300 million balance sheets, is precisely what we have been looking for to navigate the next phase of growth successfully. He brings rigour and insight from his most recent experiences with fintech businesses CashFlows and Finantix, which when combined with over a decade of working with private equity investors means he is well placed to work with the broader team to help take Funding Options along the next stage of its growth and evolution.
Ian Savage, Chief Financial Officer at Funding Options, comments: “Funding Options is on an inspiring trajectory and I’m delighted about the prospect of playing my part in that journey. Simon and the board have assembled a fantastic senior team and a workforce committed to driving competition and choice in the SME funding space. Joining so soon after the company has put stakes in the ground in terms of real-time funding approvals with its Funding Cloud platform and sustainability with the Green Finance Marketplace is invigorating. The combination of market leadership, solid foundations, good principles, and innovative intent is intoxicating and was influential in me taking on this challenge.”
About Funding Options
Funding Options is a leading data-driven marketplace for business finance, helping SMEs get the right funding in place so they can trade, plan and grow with confidence. With over 120 leading lender partners, Funding Options has helped more than 10,000 businesses across the UK and Netherlands secure over £0.5bn in funding.
In a highly fragmented SME lending ecosystem, Funding Options is fast becoming the de facto marketplace for business finance, connecting businesses, lenders and partners in a frictionless digital journey. The company is transforming the way SMEs access finance through a combination of award-winning technology which uses data analytics, open banking APIs and Artificial Intelligence, and a dedicated team of experienced Business Finance Specialists to ensure borrowers can make informed decisions and have access to funding within minutes.
Recognised as a fast-growth scaleup, Funding Options was named in the top 25% of the FT 1000, the annual list of Europe’s fastest growing companies and is part of Silicon Valley Comes to the UK’s(SVC2UK) 2020 Scale Up Club cohort, a prestigious annual list of fast-growth UK technology companies destined for great things.
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