ThinCats hires SME veteran for loan origination role
THINCATS has appointed Natwest SME veteran John Brooks as origination manager, in the latest high profile hire at the peer-to-peer pioneer.
Brooks has spent 30 years working with UK-based SMEs, and joined ThinCats from Natwest, where he spent 12 years specialising in the professional services sector. His clients at the bank included solicitors, accountants, insolvency practitioners, property managers and architects with turnovers of up to £50m.
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His appointment follows a series of senior hires at the P2P platform in recent months. In May, Samantha Gray joined the firm as general counsel, while Harry Takhar joined as business development executive in the origination department in February.
“We are delighted to welcome John into the growing team at ThinCats,” said Damon Walford, chief development officer at ThinCats.
“He joins us at a very exciting time; the second quarter of 2017 is going to be a mammoth quarter. May was a record month, and the running total is at almost £15m already in the quarter.
“With an incredibly diverse pipeline of loans in prospect, the second quarter of 2017 may well be going down in the ThinCats record books, and the continuing expansion of the team will only help this continue.”
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Brooks will be responsible for building the company’s loan origination capital in London and the South East.
“I was interested in the new environment of alternative lending, and ThinCats stood out,” said Brooks.
The business understands the value of human beings – actually listening to the story behind the business – rather than it being just a transactional platform.”