By james art SAN DIEGO, October 22, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Dave Gilbert never stood still. Since National Funding’s founding 25 years ago as one of the world’s first fintech companies focused exclusively on providing business finance and services to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), it has continuously innovated and grown in the financial services space. Today, as CEO, Dave announces the launch of his latest industry development: FairSquare, a new holding company comprised of four trusted financial and business services brands, including National Funding, QuickBridge, SmallBusinessLoans.com and Finova Capital.
“Given the depth of expertise and billions of data points we’ve accumulated across our diverse brands, we have a wealth of proven performance models through which we can elevate and expand the financial experience for millions of U.S. small and medium business owners,” said Dave. “This unprecedented amount of information provides our brands with mature risk and pricing data to confidently inform deeper, compliant lending criteria and enables us to serve a wider range of applicants.
“We are delighted to have some of the fintech industry’s leading experts on one team to help SMEs solve critical challenges in financial and business services. Today, I’m proud to make an initial announcement introducing some of the outstanding leaders who have joined our mission to help small and medium-sized businesses thrive.”
- Trent Ziegler, Chief Financial Officer
Trent has distinguished himself in previous financial leadership roles, most recently as CFO at LendingTree. His career has focused on building fintech organizations that have the capital foundations, technological innovation and rigorous cost modeling to provide critical financing for small and mid-sized businesses. A well-recognized fintech leader, Trent was chosen to All-American Institutional Investor Executive Team [2017 – 2020] and IR Magazine Best Investor Relations Officer (Small & Mid Cap) [2019 and 2020].
- Chris Panebianco: Chief Account Officer
With a 22-year, results-driven career in marketing and advertising, Chris’s role is to ensure that entrepreneurs confidently turn to FairSquare’s brands as their long-term funding and business services providers. His focus is on the intersection of customer experience excellence, diverse brand offerings, integrated communications and customer-centric performance marketing. Prior to joining FairSquare, Chris was Chief Marketing Officer at BHG Financial, where he was a key driver in financing through 9 billion dollars of business owners and building an institutional network of 1400+ community banks. He was also interim chief marketing officer at Funding Circle US
- Ashish Gupta: Chief Risk Officer
Ashish is responsible for building best-in-class data science, credit risk and analytics teams for FairSquare’s brands. He oversees the development of complex models for lending, pricing, fraud mitigation, collections and AI/machine learning models. In his previous experience, Ashish has held leadership positions at LendingPoint (Chief Risk Officer) and Prosper (Chief Credit Officer), as well as senior risk management roles at Citi and Fair Isaac.
- Daniel Almazan: Chief Technology Officer
Danny brings over 25 years of IT experience to FairSquare. His team is responsible for delivering technology roadmaps that elevate and align FairSquare’s diverse fintech platforms. In his most recent IT leadership position, Danny was SVP of Technology and Architecture at LendingPoint. There, he and his global development team integrated software, network and telephony platforms that enabled the funding of over 8 billion dollars in consumer finance delivered through offers with an average response time of less than six seconds.
- Kurt Gehring: Chief Human Resources Officer
Curt believes it is critical that an entirely online financial services company like FairSquare reflects the humanity behind its technology. It does this by fostering a workplace community that embraces change and is comfortable taking advantage of ever-evolving opportunities to drive positive customer experiences, business improvements, professional growth and personal fulfillment. Prior to joining FairSquare, Kurt headed HR for the San Diego Aviation Authority.
“FairSquare will expand and expand our brands to improve access for small and medium-sized businesses to reliable financing and business solutions,” says Dave. “The stellar professionals we’ve assembled to deliver on this vision are fintech innovators who have dedicated their careers to solving the myriad financial, technology and operational challenges facing small and medium-sized businesses. Like the entrepreneurial community we serve, we are also optimistic about the future we are building together.”
c Californiaproducts are made or arranged pursuant to a California Finance Act Lender and Broker License. License number: 603A169.
SOURCE FairSquare
