Executive Vice President and Chief Digital & Technology Officer, Abercrombie Fitch -cl A
Search every verified Samir Desai interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. In a 2018 interview, Samir Desai, then co-founder and CEO of Funding Circle, described the company as a platform that allows individuals, institutions, and governments to lend directly to small businesses. He stated that the platform had originated over 5 billion pounds in loans by that time, with 85% of loans funded in the first half of 2018 coming from existing customers. Desai said the company had developed proprietary data sets and credit risk models to assess and target small business borrowers, and noted that revenues for the first half of 2018 were over 62 million pounds, up 60% from the same period in 2017. Desai characterized Funding Circle's mission as "building a better financial world" by helping small businesses grow and reinventing the financial system. He said the company aimed to provide faster loan decisions than banks, with applications processed within 10 minutes and decisions within 24 hours. Desai also noted that every employee was a shareholder, and that The Sunday Times had ranked Funding Circle the sixteenth best company to work for in the UK.
“We provide a platform that allows anyone—individuals, institutions, or government—to directly lend money to small businesses. It means investors can get access to attractive returns and small businesses can get access to the finance they need to grow and expand, and together that means the economy can grow and prosper.”
“Small businesses are 50% of the private sector GDP and expand the private sector workforce. We saw that individuals and other investors were getting low returns on their money, increasingly losing trust and satisfaction with banks, so we thought could we bring together these disaffected parties and really create a bett...”
“On the borrower side, over 30 percent of the borrowing that goes through is from repeat customers. Eighty-five percent of the loans funded in H1 2018 came from existing customers, and over 40 percent of the revenue that Funding Circle generates is from existing customers.”
“What small businesses want is access to fast, affordable finance with great levels of service. We let borrowers apply for a loan within 10 minutes and get a decision within 24 hours, which is markedly faster than what they would be able to achieve at a bank.”
We sat down with Funding Circle's Co-founder and CEO, Samir Desai, to find out more about Funding Circle.
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