Funding Circle Holdings said today (Wednesday) it had named Rob Straathof, the former head of small business lender Liberis, as its next chief executive. The appointment is subject to regulatory approval.
Straathof, who has run Berlin-based technology subscription platform Grover since October 2025, will join in the first half of 2027. He takes over from Lisa Jacobs, who said in September she would step down. Jacobs stays in charge until the handover and will leave no later than September 2027.
He arrives from a smaller lender to the same customers. Under him, Liberis funded over 100,000 small businesses with more than $4 billion, Funding Circle said. Its own tally since 2010 is over £18 billion (about US$24 billion) for 135,000 UK firms.
The UK lender started as a peer-to-peer marketplace. In the third quarter of 2015 it processed £91.5 million in net loans to small businesses, FinanceMagnates.com reported at the time.
It hired from outside then too, bringing in Jerome Le Luel, then head of risk analytics at Barclays, as global chief risk officer.
London’s trading industry is coming home!
A Decade Running Liberis
Straathof grew Liberis from a UK lender with a single partner into an embedded finance platform offering several products, Funding Circle said.
Chairman Ken Stannard said Straathof brings a “deep understanding of small businesses” along with credit experience and a record of running fintech firms.
The Nomination Committee ran the search with an independent executive search firm. The company said Straathof’s start date would be confirmed later.
Profit Quadrupled Before the Handover
Jacobs joined Funding Circle in 2012 and became chief executive in January 2022. In the first half of 2026, revenue rose 50% to £138.2 million and profit before tax reached £24.1 million, up from £6.0 million a year earlier.
The profit growth came as the wider UK fintech sector raised less money. UK fintech investment fell 67% to £1.8 billion in the first six months of 2026, according to KPMG data.
Straathof said the aim is to “use technology and data to say yes to more of the UK’s small business owners.” He described the strategy already in place as clear.
The company then raised its full-year guidance to revenue above £255 million and pre-tax profit above £40 million. Term loan originations grew 43% to £1.05 billion in the half, and in August Castlelake committed up to £500 million of funding.
This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.
