The City veterans lending their time to the P2P sector
Peer-to-peer lending has come a long way from a niche area of financial services.
It is now recognised as a viable alternative and competitor to bank lending, with several P2P lenders backed by the British Business Bank and accredited for the government’s emergency lending schemes.
The sector has also seen a number of high-profile financial services figures join the boards of P2P platforms, using their experience to help these businesses grow and thrive.
Here are some of the City veterans who are supporting the P2P industry.
Funding Circle
The P2P business lending giant’s board is full of experienced names that have helped it grow and were integral to its initial public offering in 2018.
Its board chair is Andrew Learoyd, who spent almost quarter of a century at Goldman Sachs as a research analyst and chief operating officer.
He sits on the board with former 02 customer director and Tesco Mobile chair Cath Keers.
Other non-executive directors include Ed Wray who co-founded Betfair in 1999, and American bankers Bob Steel and Eric Daniels, former chief executive of Lloyds Bank.
Zopa
The word’s oldest P2P lender has a group board with a variety of financial services talent.
Its group board chair is Gordon McCallum, who was responsible for the creation and development of Virgin Money.
The board also includes Richard Goulding, who spent a decade as group risk officer for Standard Chartered and sits on the board of Bank of Ireland and CitiGroup Global Markets.
Its bank board includes Peter Herbert, who was previously chief executive of GE Capital.
There is also Zopa’s chief executive Jaidev Janardana, who previously worked at Capital One as chief credit officer and chief marketing officer.
Ratesetter
The P2P lender, now part of Metro Bank, appointed Threadneedle founder Paul Manduca as non-executive chair in June 2017.
He had also served as chairman of insurance giant Prudential.
Manduca stood down this year after the Metro Bank acquisition completed and was replaced by another City veteran Martyn Scrivens.
He brings more than four decades of experience in audit and risk management having spent five years as global head of internal audit at Credit Suisse Group, and prior to that he was group audit director at Lloyds Banking Group.
LendingCrowd
Former Standard Life chief executive Sir Sandy Crombie was named chairman of Scottish P2P lender LendingCrowd in October 2018.
The veteran was appointed as chief executive of Standard Life Investments in 1994.
He became group chief executive of Standard Life in 2004 and retired from his post in 2009.
More recently, he held the role of senior independent director at Royal Bank of Scotland. He received a knighthood in 2009 for services to the insurance industry in Scotland.
As the P2P lending sector matures, there may be more veterans coming its way and it may start producing its own.