Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top London based Founder operating in the Credit space. If you think a Founder is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Faisal Khalid
CEO & Founder of Bits
Faisal is the Founder and CEO of Renters Union, a popular chatbot ‘lawyer’ that provides free, instant, personalised legal advice to Londoners. It has been covered in TechCrunch, TimeOut, EveningStandard and numerous legal blogs, and been hailed by users as ‘something the Mayor should have built’, ‘BRILLIANT’ and ‘totally rubbish.’ Faisal previously built and sold a fintech venture, and spent several years in banking and private equity, before learning to code and moving to tech. Faisal holds a BA from Harvard University, and MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, and lives in London.
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About Bits, RentersUnion: Bits helps people build their credit score by providing them with a digital credit card that they pay off every month.
Frederic Nze
CEO and Founder of Loal
Frederic Nze is the founder and CEO of Oakam, a digital micro-lender that is expanding credit access for the UK’s 12 million financially-excluded consumers. Oakam has captured the opportunity presented by the rapid democratization of smartphone technology to disrupt micro-lending by making borrowing more affordable and accessible for the working class. Prior to founding Oakam, Frederic spent his career in credit risk management and consumer finance at firms including American Express, Barclays and GE Capital. He first came across the UK’s micro-lending opportunity while working on a pilot project at Barclays to evaluate product offerings for lower income customers, and realizing the potential of this market, decided to found Oakam in 2006. Raised in Cental Africa, Frederic saw firsthand how informal community lending helped to jumpstart entrepreneurs and fledgling businesses. With global ambitions for Oakam, Frederic’s ultimate goal is to bring the concept back to the developing world.
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About Akrod Limited, Loal: Loal equips those poorly served by mainstream providers to build their credit profiles and live life on another level
Salim Dhanani
CEO & Co-Founder of BigPay
Salim Dhanani is CEO & Co-Founder at BigPay
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About BigPay: Bringing fair and transparent financial services to Southeast Asia
Varun Sahni
Co-Founder & COO of CreditEnable
Varun Sahni has built and operated multiple successful companies over the past 20 years across emerging and developed markets ranging across financial services, healthcare and high technology firms. He is co-founder of Impact Investment Partners a UK based FCA regulated asset manager which operates across multiple markets and sectors. Prior to which he was head of Acumen India and has worked with Unilever, CARE and Oxfam to build up their SME portfolios. Varun is on a range of global advisory boards and fund investment committees focused on emerging markets and sustainable investing. He has been widely quoted in international media over the years and is a Chevening Scholar from the London School of Economics, a TED Fellow and an Asia Society Global Young Leader. Varun has an MA from Columbia University, and is also a Chevening Scholar.
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About CreditEnable: CreditEnable provides data analytics, deep learning, AI and technology to build solutions to financial challenges.
Nadia Sood
CEO & Co-Founder of CreditEnable
Nadia Sood has more than 20 years of emerging markets debt and equity investment experience. Through her career she has successfully executed and managed complex investments ranging in size from several million $USD to several billion involving a range of investors and financiers such as IFC, Citibank, ICICI, IDFC, ADB, the largest of which was the establishment of an USD 8 billion JV with Tata Power in India. Nadia has founded and built a number of successful businesses including Impact Investment Partners LLP. In 2018 Nadia was admitted into the Young Presidents Organisation, and in 2019 received a runners-up award at Techpreneurs Women in Tech Awards. Nadia holds a BSFS from Georgetown University and a MIA from Columbia University.
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About CreditEnable: CreditEnable provides data analytics, deep learning, AI and technology to build solutions to financial challenges.
Philip Hua
Co-Founder of CreditEnable
Philip Hua has 25 years experience in financial services. He has held senior IT and credit and risk management positions at several investment banks and asset management houses including: Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, Bankers Trust and DSP and Oldfield Partners. Phillip is also the co-creator of Crashmetrics, the only real-time VaR methodology to focus on events that wipe out major institutions. He has published various articles on risk management in academic journals and trade publications. He holds a PhD in applied mathematics from Imperial College and an MBA in Finance from Cass Business School.
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About CreditEnable: CreditEnable provides data analytics, deep learning, AI and technology to build solutions to financial challenges.
Nadeem Siam
CEO & Founder of Fund Ourselves
Nadeem Siam is the Founder & CEO of Fund Ourselves. The first fully automated short-term credit marketplace. Nadeem graduated from Canfield University in the UK and Lulea University in Sweden with two masters of science degrees in Astronautics and Space Engineering and Space Technology; respectively.
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About Fund Ourselves, PTP Funding: Short-term credit from the people to the people.
Tuomas Hietanen
Co-Founder and CTO of Fund Ourselves
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About Fund Ourselves: Short-term credit from the people to the people.
Abdullah Saab
CFO and Co-Founder of Paystone
Abdullah Saab is the CFO and Co-Founder at Paystone
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About Paystone: Paystone is a provider of customer engagement services and electronic payment processing solutions for businesses of all sizes.
Sho Sugihara
Co-Founder & CEO of Pave
Co-Founder and CEO at Portify.
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About Pave: The proper path to good credit
Jonathan Hassid
Co-Founder of TotallyMoney
Jonathan is an internet focused entrepreneur with extensive track record in founding, scaling and exiting profitable consumer facing businesses. He has particular expertise in digital marketing and consumer FinTech, having spent nearly 10 years creating and growing the TotallyMoney.com group, one of the UK’s leading FS tech/marketing businesses whose credit decisioning services are integrated into many of the UK’s biggest financial businesses. As an investor and adviser he sits on the board of several businesses with interests in the sharing economy and social enterprise as well as FinTech.
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About TotallyMoney: TotallyMoney puts customers right at the center of their credit data, helping them make smarter financial decisions.
Juan Montalvo Bressi
Co-Founder & Chief Risk & Analytics Officer of Tymit
Juan Montalvo Bressi is the Co-Founder and Chief Risk & Analytics Officer of Tymit.
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About Tymit: Tymit is a provider of credit cards that offers financing purchases overtime and manages the monthly budget.
Brett Shanley
CEO & Founder of Knoma
Brett is the Founder and CEO of Knoma, the Knowledge Market, offering a payment solution and marketplace for lifelong learning. He passionate about equipping people for the future of work and providing sound financial options.
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About Knoma: Knoma offers a payment solution and marketplace for lifelong learning.
Aneesh Varma
Founder & CEO of Aire
Aneesh is the co-founder of Aire, a fintech startup that has built an alternative credit scoring model. Previously he co-founded FabriQate in 2008, an award-winning enterprise software company focussed on retail sector. Aneesh started his career at JPMorgan in the speciality finance and fintech M&A team on transactions with CapitalOne, Visa, TSYS, FirstData & Metavante. Educated as an engineer at Lehigh University, US, his focus was on algorithmic systems and quantitative finance. In 2005 he was chosen by the NASDAQ Foundation as a Martindale Scholar. Aneesh describes himself as a third-culture citizen having lived in 11 countries. Now based in London, he was recognised as the British Council Young Entrepreneur 2009 and SLP London Fellow 2013. He is also the curator of FinTech Fantastic, an online magazine and is a strong proponent of the financial inclusion movement.
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About Aire, Foodm: Aire provides credit assessment services that gives people a new credit score to help them qualify for essential financial products.
Jon Bundy
COO & Co-Founder of Aire
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About Aire: Aire provides credit assessment services that gives people a new credit score to help them qualify for essential financial products.
Ahmed Wadi
Co-Founder & CEO of MoneyFellows
Ahmed Wadi is a Co-Founder & CEO at MoneyFellows.
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About MoneyFellows: MoneyFellows is a collaborative money management and lending platform digitizing ROSCAs offering users competitive financial solutions.
Panos Skliamis
CEO & Founder of SPIN Analytics
Panos Skliamis is the CEO and founder of Spin Analytics.
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About SPIN Analytics: SPIN Analytics is an innovative provider of credit risk modelling and analytics solutions for Banks and Digital Banks.
Johnny Vowles
CEO (Founder) of Expend
Founder and CEO of Expend. Tech and product guy. Innovating in the FinTech sector.
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About Expend: Expend is the expense management and company spending platform.
Rudolph Graan
Founder & CTO of Expend
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About Expend: Expend is the expense management and company spending platform.
Catherine Woolgar
Co-Founder/ CTO of SmartTrade App
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About SmartTrade App: Accept any card payment, organise your paperwork and run your business with a free application on your phone, SmartTrade App.
Loren Barton
Founder, Managing Director of Kaleidoscope Group Ltd
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About Kaleidoscope Group Ltd: Consultancy and advisory firm focused on bridging the gap between innovation and performance in the market
