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2026.09.28 | TB | Fintech | Funding Circle Platform vs Credit

原标题：Funding Circle – Platform Powerhouse or Cyclical Credit Play?

#financials

Third Bridge · 2026-09-28

Analyst-led • 14 Sep 2026

Companies: FCH GB

Jon Dobson (JD) Managing Director at Ravenswood Trading

Max Harper (MH) — Third Bridge Sector Analyst

Agenda

Key Insights

Introduction

MH [00:00:02]: Welcome to Third Bridge's Interview entitled Funding Circle – Platform Powerhouse or Cyclical Credit Play? I'm Max Harper, and I'll be facilitating today's Interview with Mr Jon Dobson, former Head, Direct and Partner Marketing at Funding Circle Holdings.

John, before we start today's Interview, please state I agree or I disagree to the following statement: You understand the definition of material non-public information and agree not to disclose any such information, or any other information which is confidential, during this Interview.

JD [00:00:32]: I agree.

MH [00:00:36]: Could you start with a brief introduction to your background?

JD [00:00:42]: I was at Funding Circle for nearly eight years from 2016-24. My role in that time was I headed up the direct marketing function, so the direct marketing channels within Funding Circle there. Lending to small businesses directly is what we termed our direct side. Also headed up the broker side, which is the other side of the business, obviously working with third parties to get the SMEs, the funds they needed to do all the exciting things they wanted to do directly. Yes, headed up broker and managed the direct marketing side, the biggest revenue drivers on the direct side.

Questions

[00:01:43] Funding Circle's share price dropped over the past few days, following the September 2026 announcement of Lisa Jacobs' planned step down by no later than September 2027 – who has been the company's CEO since 2022. What's your assessment of her potential departure? How important has she been to the business's performance over the past few years?

JD [00:02:11]: It's a good question. Look, it's significant. Lisa has been CEO for a few years, as you say. However, she's been at the business since 2012. The business was founded in 2010. For most of the time Funding Circle has existed, Lisa has been a senior member of the team there. Look, she's been critical, especially given her long standing alignment with the founders of the business, who have all stepped away now in an executive capacity at least. She was a handpicked successor to Samir Desai, who is primary founder as CEO when he left the role. In terms of continuity, it's going to be a challenge. I don't think there's any business factors. This is not tied to results as best I understand it. You can discern that from what Funding Circle said outwardly about her departure. They're talking about it maintaining an orderly transition. They're talking about continuation. They're talking about building on the platform for growth that has been established. While Lisa's driven a lot of strategic redirectioning, I think this is all about taking the business forward in the direction that has evolved. Going forward as well. Yes, there will be friction. Of course, there always is when a key person leaves, particularly someone with a tenure of Lisa, but I think there's opportunities within this happening as well.

MH [00:04:37]: What do you see those opportunities being? What redirection do you think Funding Circle might look to take?

JD [00:04:45]: Continuation, obviously, will be key. Look, the culture at Funding Circle, the working culture is exceptional, and that shows through right throughout the organisation. Literally, it's easy to say this, but everyone singing from the same hymn sheet, everyone behind the business. Everyone is super engaged. That's always been a key thing of Funding Circle, makes it such a great culture to be a part of. If you can marry that continuation, and look, we've developed a robust history of generating really good results since become a publicly listed company. If you can marry that with, I think, some, if I'm being honest, and there's no reflection on Lisa. Look, Lisa wasn't known as a key industry leader when she joined Funding Circle within that space. What Lisa does and does very well is offer a quiet leadership. She's not someone that enjoys necessarily hugely interacting with the broader media hugely. If you have a figurehead that can marry up the internal side with perhaps helping Funding Circle elevate their standing externally, be maybe more of a bridge to the city, which Lisa does very well in terms of trading updates and everything, but maybe more of an opportunity to develop a stronger ongoing presence potentially. Look, that's my personal view, but I'd say that's certainly an opportunity for Funding Circle to help raise that profile.

MH [00:07:08]: Do you think someone within Funding Circle might be able to do that, or will the company be forced to look externally?

JD [00:07:16]: It's interesting. There's one person in my mind who is a bit of a sole candidate. That is Alex Allen. He's been the UK MD for a number of years now. What Alex offers is exceptionally strong leadership, obviously, would offer the cultural continuance. He has a fantastic communication style. He would be very good at it. I believe he's probably, to the best of my knowledge, the only viable internal candidate. The challenge there is, would he want it on a personal level, he moved to Portugal a few years ago, he flies in and does a couple of days in the UK. From there, he's raising a relatively young family out in Portugal and he's chosen to do that. Are these the hallmarks of someone that is really looking for this role? I don't know. I can't speak for him. In my view, he would be exceptional at it. Again, not necessarily that renowned or a leader that comes with that external renowned prior to joining Funding Circle. These are all factors the board will need to think about, but from my point of view, Alex Allen done a great job, team 100% behind him, really engaging personality.

[00:08:57] How smooth do you see the transition being from Lisa to another candidate – whether it be Alexander Allen or someone else?

JD [00:09:13]: Look, if it's internal, then that obviously makes that process hugely easier. We dwell on a potential for someone like Alex to come in, in which case, yes, friction would be limited, I believe. Externally, look, I think it's no secret, you don't know what you're getting with someone until they're in situ. Funding Circle has, at times, taken on product leaders, for example, that maybe haven't quite melded into the culture as readily as possibly could have been achieved. There's a lot of history that will need to be taken into account, but they've got some really smart people on the board. Samir as the founder is still heavily involved in a non-exec capacity as well, exceptionally well-placed to make a good choice.

[00:10:24] Funding Circle originally expanded due to a gap in the market, while larger banks also retrenched from the space. What's your assessment of the key dynamics affecting the space? Does that gap still exist in the same way for the company to exploit to its advantage?

JD [00:10:46]: What the banks moving away from the SME market did. Obviously, there's still a level of catering to that market, but throughout all my tenure at Funding Circle, the feedback… We did a lot of primary customer research. The feedback was unanimously, look, I feel let down by the banks. The story we would hear over and over again is, look, I applied for funding. I needed that funding maybe six months ago. My bank took my application. They left me waiting for a decision for 3-4 months, and then they said no. Similarly, if you leave someone waiting 3-4 months, and then you do say yes, equally, that's not a particularly strong journey. Maybe that opportunity they needed that capital for has evaporated, maybe the dearth of working capital that they needed, if that's what they needed, has caused them operational problems, who knows? Basically, what we were seeing time and time again, and I heard from business owners directly is, "Look, I went to the banks, they let me down." That I think there has to be quite a fundamental change from the banks to re-enter this space, I think, and they'd have to do a hell of a lot in order to prove their appetite and their support for SMEs were they to move back into this space in a meaningful way.

[00:12:42] What do you think is the rationale behind banks saying no to prospective clients that Funding Circle feels it can underwrite? Why is the company able to do so when banks aren't?

JD [00:12:55]: Look, for most of this time, I think, honestly, small businesses weren't the priority for high street banks, in particular. They were BOIL accounts focused on bigger deals, institutional capital, that kind of thing. It's been quite a stressed financial environment, clearly, not just since COVID, but in the run-up to that as well. I believe that retrenchment was all about going where there was most value for those banks so that they could ride out those conditions while demonstrating maximum value to shareholders, frankly.

[00:13:48] You don't see much risk from large banks coming into the space, but is there any risk from more specialist lenders – such as the Oaknorths of the world, Allica and smaller banks – trying to capture market share from Funding Circle?

JD [00:14:07]: There's no doubt it's an exciting sector. There's a lot of investors that I know personally are eyeing this space. What you've got with Funding Circle, which really does act as a significant moat for them is they've been in this space for 16 years now. They have been the major player certainly in the unsecured lending space for virtually all of that time. They've survived a period of consolidation, entrants haven't made it, a lot of growing fintechs have either survived, or gone under or been acquired. Where we come out through that consolidation is Funding Circle absolutely the leader. It's always had the biggest budget, say marketing, clearly an area I'm involved in. We could blow everyone out of the water in terms of the money we could spend and what that enabled us to do and spend on.

But really, the history as well that that allows you to develop when you're riding so high, be that risk management, underwriting, all of that has such a platform for acquiring that key knowledge given the scale we're working at. The culture of the business, which is very much, look, let's test, let's see what happens, let's learn from it and let's optimise. Funding Circle has never been afraid of making mistakes. Rather, it transitions from that and learns and optimises off the back of it. That's a lot of history you've got within this sector for particularly new market entrants to catch up on.

[00:16:28] What impact do you see AI having on the competitive landscape? What key headwinds and tailwinds might arise?

JD [00:16:44]: In terms of AI, so look, AI has always been a key part of the story for Funding Circle, both operationally and from an investor comms perspective, a lot of time, money, energy has been spent on automation and artificial intelligence. That's way before it is being talked about in the terms it is today as well. The buzz was that certainly in the sector that the Funding Circle really got going, yes, the AI, the automation, the machine learning that really investors and shareholders really took to heart and seem to really respect and value. Look, this is not a new thing. Obviously, there's a bit of a tidal wave of momentum behind this in a broader sense now, but it's been a key part of Funding Circle's thinking for many years, frankly.

That automation, particularly at the risk and underwriting stage, has been one of the key factors in Funding Circle's really strong progress to date. A lot of work has gone into that. It's not all been plain sailing. We've had to learn how to communicate to that, not just to the investment community, but also to customers. That's been a really delicate balance. How do we talk about the role of AI and automation and this non-personalised view that we're taking of their business.

Again, what's come through really clearly in research and marketing tests at scale has been if you talk about automation, AI, people like it, particularly investors, they are turned on by that, and you can appreciate why. Up to a point, customers are as well, but I think if you cross a threshold and for us, it was all about how quick a decision would be made in terms of their loan application- then I think it starts to become unreal. People start to, if not mistrust it, then think, "Hang on, my business is my baby. If you're not going to be looking at it as a distinct entity and all the strengths and weaknesses that are fundamentally tied up in while I spend 18 hours per day trying to launch and grow then I'm not interested." We saw huge drop-offs in response rates to marketing once we started talking about instant decision as opposed to being able to talk about industry-leading fast decisions. You will get a decision within, say, four hours, that resonated hugely more with businesses than, yes, you will get an instant decision because they know no human is there, obviously, looking at their business in detail if you're giving an instant decision. That we found to be a major turn off.

[00:20:48] What level of drop-off do you realistically expect if Funding Circle were to run an instant decision campaign vs a four-hour one? Is the company actually delaying decisions by using AI? What's the intersection there?

JD [00:21:18]: Look, operationally, no, you're not necessarily doing anything different. When I say significant down weights in response to where we presumably cross that threshold, we're talking about 20-30% less response if you're not able to presumably generate that confidence that you're actually going to be making a good decision for the business based on how you see their business.

MH [00:22:09]: What's the actual sweet spot for using AI to generate a credit decision or an approval, if it's not instantaneous?

JD [00:22:26]: Again, it's not about what you do necessarily. It's about how you present that to the customer. You might have the best process and know instantly that in the case of a bad prospective borrower, then that decision is probably quite quick and easy, but in terms of a positive, you might know instantly. Look, there's always going to be outliers. There's going to be complicating factors. There's going to be borrowers that require a deeper look and manual intervention. That will always be the case, but I think certainly, in terms of the insight we generated, you might be advised to just sit on that decision and play it through nicely with some comms around, "Look, thanks for your application. We're looking at your business. We'll come back to you directly with a decision." If you then hit them with a decision in a couple of hours, I think you would get a huge amount of traction and convert really strongly on those applications, I think. Look, you will get positive response from an instant decision, but in our experience, you're not going to get cumulatively as much as if someone has the confidence that you're actually taking the time to look at their business and judge it accordingly.

[00:24:20] We're seeing some potential headwinds emerging with continued pressure on SMEs, and potential tax and interest rate hikes. How do you see that reading through to Funding Circle?

JD [00:24:37]: Funding Circle has gone through, as I said, this really interesting period. It's founded after the financial crash of 2007. It's not been plain sailing since 2010 when the business actually launched, not least COVID within that recession. Throughout all of that period, you've had challenges with fluctuating interest rates. That's something Funding have learned to handle reasonably elegantly to price according to the risk of potential borrowers. That is definitely a strength of Funding Circle. How they present their interest rates to the market has been they found a way to navigate that without undue friction. If you're talking about tax hikes, then honestly, I would say that's an opportunity. Borrowing for tax purposes is one of the biggest loan purposes Funding Circle sees.

MH [00:26:11]: What do you mean by that? How does that work?

JD [00:26:18]: It might be corporation tax might be right. Let's use VAT. Company needs to do their VAT returns suddenly, that's going to be a quarterly capital drain to some extent. That would be a very usual reason why a business will come to Funding Circle and historically take a term loan to manage that fluctuation in the cash flow. Increasingly, perhaps with FlexiPay, the credit card offerings that Funding Circle added to the portfolio, then again, that was a really compelling loan purpose or a really common loan purpose that we saw businesses lending for. Look, if the liability becomes greater, you think that only becomes a more compelling reason to borrow from someone like Funding Circle.

MH [00:27:31]: Might tax hikes actually have a positive impact on the business?

JD [00:27:38]: It's certainly going to give some really interesting opportunities to how you talk about Funding Circle's portfolio of offerings and position that to customers, yes.

MH [00:27:54]: What level of uplift would you expect? What percentage of business do you think comes from tax optimisation?

JD [00:28:08]: Look, being completely transparent, I'm not able to quantify that exactly, and that's because the data around loan purpose was never as robust as we would ideally like it to be. What we found through customer research and campaign A/B testing around messaging and loan purpose messaging, particularly, is you might get a 10%, 15%, 20% uplift, if you're talking about loan purpose borrowing for… To manage your tax liability compared to, I forget now what else we tested that against, but that was the one, the loan purpose that came out really, really strongly. Look, cash flow, speaking generally, will always be a prime loan purpose. Honestly, most of our data was captured as cash flow, but I think that's more about the weaknesses in how we captured that data rather than the actual specific reasons for why businesses will borrow.

[00:29:33] The net annualised loss rate – which is obviously backward-looking – has hovered around 7%, give or take, since 2024. Do you see that ticking up any risk, or what's your assessment?

JD [00:30:01]: I'll speak here as an investor to have substantial interest in Funding Circle as a shareholder, then it's not something I'm worried about. The reason for that is we've always had a high-performing risk function at Funding Circle, always had smart people and a really brutal, if I'm honest, recruitment process around recruiting for that team. From the models the risk team would build through to the guardrails that we were able to apply to the business in terms of bad debt rates, then it was always very predictable, or we were able to predict it very well, and it didn't throw up surprises.

One of the things that was always an outstanding question before COVID came along and solved this one for us was, "Well, what happens in a recession?" Does your bad debt rate just kill the business? Actually, no, our bad debt rate was traditionally around six-point-something percent anyway before things went south. That was manageable. Really, we've not seen… You talked about 7%. It's very little change within that over what is now a long period of time. I first became involved 10 years ago with Funding Circle. We were talking about the same numbers then.

[00:32:04] During COVID, there was some level of government support. Did that not limit the potential downside? Without that, is there not a risk that Funding Circle is potentially more exposed, even if it doesn't actually seem that way due to the loss of government support?

JD [00:32:25]: It's a good question. Yes, you're right, particularly with the first version of the scheme, the BBLS that was abused somewhat, let's be honest, then yes, that would have been a factor there. What you've seen since COVID has been a normalisation of that product, the government-backed products over time. There are still government-backed products, not as compelling, but they still exist and Funding Circle are still achieving a lot in terms of marketing those products. People don't necessarily appreciate when they see a government-backed product that it's… The guarantee to the lender, not the borrower. Yes, those have existed, and they've really actually helped Funding Circle drive the business. It gives a sense of credibility, I think, to the borrower, that you have this government-linked product. Yes, you're right, as those guarantees may dilute over time, then yes, there's more risk, but Funding Circle were applying the same models. Those same robust models that have performed now so well in such changing environments for such a long period of time throughout that. The models evolve as you go as well. They're always learning. We talked about the machine learning nature of Funding Circle. Circling back to my initial point as a shareholder, I'm genuinely not worried about that as a factor on my investment.

[00:34:46] Funding Circle was built out of term loans, with FlexiPay and cards still described as being the J-curve of growth stages. What's your assessment of the product suite? How strong is it vs peers in the market?

JD [00:35:05]: Certainly, vs peers in the market, it's outstanding. It's a really strong portfolio of products. It does different things for different people, potentially at different points of their business life cycle. It makes a lot of sense. What you have is still the term loans product at the heart of everything. That is the cash cow. Yes, FlexiPay, you talk about the card growth and the exciting growth in transactions and revenue there. This will be a challenge for the new CEO coming in. How do you see that product? How valuable is it as a product as part of the suite vs is it a tool to bring people on eventually into a term loan, which is term loan being the cash cow within the business. Does it help engage people when perhaps they're not in the market for that term loan? Can you take people over? Can you keep them as a warm prospect while they're engaging with and using your product and picking up a degree of revenue for and then be in a key place to issue a term loan as and when that business wants it.

The reason that's a decision is internally, it has taken over the last few years, quite a lot of resource to both think about and execute on the credit card offering. It could be argued it's been a distraction away from core business. Look, the results are strong. They're telling a story or they help tell a story to the city around the progress that's being made. They are generating revenue. The decision will be from the inside that are we prepared to keep back in that in terms of the resource it requires internally to manage that.

[00:37:54] Funding Circle indicated success at cross-selling to FlexiPay and cards, with 31% of customers having more than one product in H1 2026. How successful do you foresee the company being at cross-selling going forwards? Does that offer a meaningful runway for growth?

JD [00:38:16]: Yes, absolutely, it does. As I was just saying, look, if you can keep a degree of revenue coming in around those key points when a customer takes a high-value product, then that's clearly going to leave you in a good place both for generating that revenue, but also engaging those people better in a broader relationship with Funding Circle. 31% yes, that's a number. It's an impressive number. The core thing will be… Yes, people can have this product, but how many of them are actually using it on a day-to-day basis and how much of that is just keeping the lights on, keeping the brand awareness for such time as they might want another product. That's my personal view, borne out of the operational deliverance we've had on how we manage that product and invest in that product as well.

[00:39:36] What might be the maximum number of clients with more than one product that Funding Circle will be able to achieve?

JD [00:39:47]: Look, you could go and issue a credit card to a hell of a lot of people. I don't think that's the key metric. The key metric is who is going to actually use this. For that, you need probably a slightly better targeting models. I would suggest, look, one thing Funding Circle is great at is building models and proved exceptionally good at targeting term loans to the people at the right time and lending the right amount of money to those people.

MH [00:40:43]: What direction do you see the models taking to be more successful? Where do you think they're falling short?

JD [00:40:52]: It's clearly in the conversion. If you're issuing a second product, FlexiPay, to 31% of your base, that's a real headline number. That's great. What I don't have an up-to-date handle on is how much of that 31% is actually using that product in a way that commercially washes its face for the product and the investment that you put into issuing that product and marketing that product ongoing. That's the key thing. Really leveraging the insight that Funding Circle has been able to build over time in targeting term loans so well within the SME space to FlexiPay, because I still think there's this look, they're generating history as they go, which will allow them to feed the models, which will enable those models to perform much better. I still think we're at that stage where it's a spray and pray, like, "Let's issue this card, let's grow the customer base, let's cross-sell, let's show some really big numbers." At some point, probably just needs a clear strategy on what role does a product like FlexiPay credit cards in general play within the mix. What exactly is the role that we're targeting here, because honestly, I think maybe there's not a 100% alignment or understanding maybe in terms of what the longer term plan is for FlexiPay.

[00:43:23] Do you think FlexiPay will be a successful product? Do you agree that the J-curve will kick in?

JD [00:43:38]: I certainly think it can be. It makes sense, absolutely. As long as the product continues to offer what it needs to. There's a lot of talk when we launched that about hygiene factors. Should there be a cashback element? How is it going to compete with other cards, how long term could card features like that be and how central to the product would they be in the longer term as well. As long as you've got the commercials right and Funding Circle is really strong at making commercially good decisions, and it can perform in a robust manner as a viable member of the product suite beyond doing the obviously beneficial job it does in helping grow the customer base for other products, then yes, that can be a phenomenally successful product.

[00:45:05] What's your assessment of Funding Circle's ability to retain business? What level of business and clients do you think will be retained? How do you see that evolving?

JD [00:45:17]: Funding Circle do a good job at that. A lot of it is honestly done along very similar lines to actual customer acquisition, primary customer acquisition. It is about serving compelling reasons to borrow again, even though that might be a second or third loan term, do a good job of modelling where there might be additional loan potential and upselling additional funding within the same, I suppose, added lending on top of the initial term loan the customer would have come in for. That is certainly something that would help retention as well if you're topping up on an ongoing basis and just managing those loans under management and keeping them fresh, keeping businesses coming back to you and engaging, then that's clearly going to be a really powerful factor. Genuinely, that is something that Funding Circle does well, both through the modelling of who can be targeted, to the execution and the conversion and ultimately retention.

[00:46:56] What's your assessment of Funding Circle's key acquisition channels? How do you split between broker, direct, etc?

JD [00:47:04]: I obviously talked to you a lot about that, but at the point of departure in 2024, it was really exciting. MoM… The whole business invested in, obviously, not just the lending volumes we're doing, but we're absolutely neck and neck in terms of who would do most in a given month between the direct business and the broker business. Look, you could take very comfortably 50% of lending at that time being done through direct side and equivalent through the broker side. Worth saying that the broker side had grown from about one-fourth of lending a few years prior up to that level. We've seen a lot of traction in that space. That's something that not a lot of people really realise the relative size and value of the broker channel to Funding Circle there. Those are the two main channels within marketing and acquisition channels on the direct side, where we have the big budgets and we're doing lots of activity across a full mix of channels.

You would see about half of the direct response coming from the direct marketing channels. That's direct mail, huge channel for Funding Circle, which again surprises some people, given the nature of them being a digital platform and e-mail. Those channels are generating about half of the business there. Paid search was the other huge generator doing not as much as the direct channels, but still doing a lot. It took a lot of marketing spend to feed that funnel though. There was a lot of drop off, a lot of poor quality in customers that would come through that channel, much lower average loan size would come through digital channels in general than the direct channels.

MH [00:49:50]: How do you think the CAC [customer acquisition cost] differs on each channel?

JD [00:50:01]: The most efficient were direct channels. Obviously, e-mail doesn't cost a lot to do. You're buying data and modelling data from an acquisition sense. You're communicating virtually for free with your existing customer base. That is small. From an acquisition point of view, yes, we're talking about GBP 200 cost per lead within there, and you get about a 10% conversion overall. Leading is still about GBP 2,000 cost per customer there. It would be substantially higher for paid search due to the factors I talked about. Then you've got things that you can quantify or try and quantify above the line, the TV advertising that comparatively much higher cost per customers. Can you measure that as robustly as some of the other channels? No, absolutely not. Maybe there's a degree of crossover there, particularly with paid search, which does suck up some of the volume from other channels. Then we would see a healthy number from social media, from affiliates, but absolutely, if you think in terms of direct mail, e-mail and paid search, that was where the absolute bulk of customers were coming from.

[00:52:02] What's your assessment of Funding Circle's funding or platform strength? How effective is it for loan growth or minimising risk?

JD [00:52:26]: I think that's the thing I would say. It's proven across lots of different financial climates, lots of different things going on over quite a long period of time now, the most recent 16 years have been turbulent, but they've been exciting, lots of high growth. Fintech was barely even a phrase you would hear at the start of that journey. Look, a long history of building really robust data and the models that generate that data. Yes, being resolute on who you lend to and how much you lend to them, it can sometimes feel like a limiting factor within a growth context, but what that does is give you that credibility as a business in terms of keeping those numbers in check where you need to.

[00:53:47] Funding Circle's revenue increased 50% YoY in H1 2026 to GBP 138m, driven by a 52% increase in credit, which extended to GBP 1.7bn. What is your outlook for revenue expansion, based on everything that we've discussed so far?

JD [00:54:09]: Look, I think what Funding Circle has done a key part of their strategy really is to tell a consistent story to the market and deliver on those numbers. That is the number one most important thing, Funding Circle to generate that market confidence. Look, Funding Circle delivering strong numbers, what they're also doing is setting strong expectations around what is going to or how those numbers are going to evolve in the future. Yes, revenue has increased really strongly. Margin, look, Funding Circle has said margin will increase from 17% to 20%, I believe. Funding Circle has driven a very robust history of hitting the numbers it says it will hit and potentially overachieving those, which is all part of the comms mix in terms of how they position Funding Circle as an investment vehicle. If Funding Circle are saying they will grow that number to 20%, they will have, I am absolutely certain a really robust plan of how they get there and not just how they get to the 20%, but how they over deliver on that as well. In due course, you'll be seeing some good updates on progress against those targets.

[00:56:09] Funding Circle's PBT came to GBP 24m in H1 2026, with margin standing at 17%. The company plans to achieve low-to-mid-20s by FY29. Are the actions taken enough to achieve margin expansion? What other levers might be available?

JD [00:56:35]: Yes, exactly. This is the point that I was just talking about entirely. If Funding Circle say they can do 20% by 2029, they will do 20% by 2029 unless something completely unforeseen happens in the market, then yes, I would be confident that they have a robust roadmap for getting not just to that number, but above that number. That's always been the playbook under Lisa and Samir as prior to that as we found our way through becoming a publicly listed company after a bit of a sticky start at the IPO stage, which drove, I think, a lot of the thinking around how we need to position ourselves going forward and talk about and deliver against numbers going forward.

[00:57:39] What are the top 2-3 key things that you think investors should be watching for from Funding Circle over the next 1-2 years or so?

JD [00:57:53]: We talked about the portfolio mix. Definitely keep an eye out for that, and the strategic role of the card offerings within that. Better or wholly catering for their customer base through a suite of complementary financial products is the end game there. We've talked about there being different and complementary benefits to having that portfolio of products, but I think that will really be how you can yardstick performance and future direction, particularly once the new CEO comes in and how the comms sit around the portfolio of products. I think that will naturally be a key one. Definitely managing the remaining transition from the CBILS, the COVID loan product cohorts into future lending, essentially the retention element you talked about, the COVID schemes drove a huge amount of lending. How much of that can you maintain over the next 3-5 years, as what would typically have been a five-year loan term has been coming to an end, maybe topped up a little, but gradually, as that momentum wanes for that cohort, then how much of that value can you keep hold of? I think that will be key.

From a personal point of view, I think embedded finance is another big one. If Funding Circle can crack embedded finance, and it's something we experimented with. We tried to do partnerships and projects with other providers, but you see the direction of travel in the industry, people like PayPal, Amazon, just embedding finance for their SME customers within their customer journeys. If Funding Circle can meaningfully conquer that space, then that has huge commercial value. To do that, I think Funding Circle has to bite the bullet and put significant development resource behind that as a strategic way forward. I think that's always been the limiting factor. Yes, small partnerships have emerged between, say, people like Sage, for example, but really, they've not got off the ground as well as they might because of the not limited appetite for putting development resource behind it, but higher competing priorities certainly within Funding Circle. I think that's true of the partners you would work with, within embedded finance as well, but if you could attack that meaningfully and strategically with an appropriate level of budget and resource, then I think that would be a super interesting one for the business and shareholders alike.

[01:01:49] Would you like to highlight anything else about Funding Circle?

JD [01:01:56]: No, other than to say, I think genuinely, I'm not offloading my Funding Circle shares. It's a well-managed journey that Funding Circle we're on, cemented by consistent leadership. Obviously, there is a challenge there going forward now, but from what I've seen in my history with Funding Circle and certainly on the inside of Funding Circle, that will be a process that is managed thoughtfully, carefully and with due consideration for everyone at Funding Circle, and that's everyone internally and everyone that has a stake financially within the business as well externally. I remain really optimistic on the prospects for Funding Circle to continue their growth journey and yes, keep making good progress against the goals.

MH [01:03:01]: Let me close by saying thank you for your input and good-bye.

JD [01:03:06]: Okay. Thank you.

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