Steve Allocca Managing Director, US, Funding Circle

Company

Funding Circle is a lending platform for small businesses. When the company was founded in 2010 in London, they could see that businesses weren’t being given the finance to grow, while investors were making poor returns. They had a simple idea — let them support each other. By lending directly to businesses through Funding Circle, investors can now earn attractive returns to better provide for their future. Businesses get fast, easy access to funding to grow, create jobs, support local communities and drive the economy forward. They believe it’s better for everyone.

Search Background

Funding Circle were seeking a new MD to shape the future and vision for their growing US business. Since founding, Funding Circle have solidified their place in the SME lending space, they have originated £14bn of lending globally ($4bn within US), and on the back of a hugely successful IPO and continued success post 2019, they were in a strong position to continue to diversify, scale and invest into their US business.

Requirements

Funding Circle were looking for someone to lead and further scale their success in the US, not just expanding their operations in the US, but through identifying new product opportunities such as their new fully end-to-end ‘Lending as a service/LaaS’ product, to better serve their partners, regional banking network and SMEs within the US. They were looking for a MD to not only foster further innovation, and new product development, but facilitate growth, drive commercial strategy, and create a unique and high performing culture across their teams and functions.

Result

Erevena executed a search across the US, securing Steve Allocca; an experienced Lending and FinTech full-stack Exec leader, with experience across a number of high-growth, scaled and early-stage lending/credit businesses. Steve was the COO at BlueVine, from Feb 2021, before joining Funding Circle, and also held seats on the board of several US based FinTech’s. Prior to BlueVine he was the President of LendingClub, and spent four years at PayPal as Global Head of Credit. Steve’s Executive career started in 2008 when he was brought in as COO and President of a small private student loan business, before setting up his own lending business; Loan Science in Dec 2008. He ran Loan Science as Co-Founder and CEO for four years, and to date remains on the Board of Directors. Steve has a degree in Economics from Washington and Lee University, and went on to obtain an MBA in Finance & Marketing from Northwestern University.