Exclusive: Funding Options poaches Flagstone CTO

Malcolm Leach spent over three years building the tech for deposit management at Flagstone.

Amid what Funding Options CEO Simon Cureton described as the company’s “most successful quarter” since the Covid pandemic began, the company today appointed a new chief technology officer.

Malcolm Leach, the former CTO at deposit management firm Flagstone, has joined to lead the tech development at Funding Options.

Before Flagstone he also served as CTO at global marketing agency iCrossing UK and previously worked at Virgin Media, Capgemini and Universal Music Group.

Leach takes over from Aleks Kudic, who served as Funding Options CTO since March 2020, but left in January to join Meta (formerly Facebook) as an engineering manager.

“We are delighted to welcome Malcolm to the team, as we close our most successful quarter since the crisis began, moving closer to our target of facilitating £1bn in vital finance for SMEs,” said Funding Options CEO Simon Cureton.

Cureton has been leading the business through a period of diversification, as it branches out from being a pure lending marketplace to include everything from energy switching to international payments.

Most recently this has resulted in the creation of Funding Cloud, which lets lenders embed their products directly into the Funding Options resulting in more streamlined applications and faster decisions.

Cureton added that Leach would be working closely on Funding Cloud: “in particular how we are able to optimise data for the ecosystem and drive further auto-decisioning benefits as more alternative lenders embrace open banking and embedded finance to support SMEs.”