Samir Desai on small business lending
From Funding Circle - Interview with Samir Desai · · FundingCircleUK
“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.”
On , Samir Desai, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital & Technology Officer at ABERCROMBIE & FITCH -CL A, spoke about small business lending during Funding Circle - Interview with Samir Desai on FundingCircleUK.
About Samir Desai
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.