ThinCats, which claims to be the “leading” alternative finance provider to SMEs, recently announced the appointment of Richard Newman, Senior Director, Transaction Management to manage its Midlands transaction team.
Richard reportedly has over 20 years of corporate finance experience occupying senior roles at HSBC, RBS and KBC Peel Hunt.
Richard is a qualified chartered accountant with professional expertise in a range of transactions from funding requirements to large, syndicated deals. Richard will now be reporting directly to Peter Talbot, who is currently the Head of Transaction Management at ThinCats.
This latest announcement follows other ThinCats appointments in the West Midlands such as Neil Taylor as Director, Transaction Management in June and Tom Horton as Director, Business Development in May of this year.
Richard Newman, Senior Director, Transaction Management, ThinCats stated:
“I’m excited to be joining the ThinCats Midlands team. From working with businesses across the Midlands for more than 20 years, I’m delighted to be supporting mid-sized, high growth businesses that have been somewhat overlooked by traditional lenders. I look forward to working with Peter, Neil and the rest of the ThinCats team.”
Peter Talbot, Head of Transaction Management, ThinCats remarked:
“The West Midlands makes an important contribution to the UK economy, so it’s critical that businesses in the region can access the necessary funding to invest in their futures. As ThinCats continues to attract more borrowers, it’s exciting to have Richard, Neil and Tom all on board now so that advisers and businesses can benefit from their collective experience.”
As covered in March 2022, UK-based ThinCats, the alternative finance provider to SMEs, has had appointed Billy Ferguson to serve as the firm’s CTO.
Ferguson brings considerable professional experience within the IT industry, having previously served in key roles at Aldermore Bank, Allianz Insurance as well as Prudential.
Ferguson will reportedly be joining ThinCats from Aldermore Bank where he had been working for more than 5 years in various roles such as the Head of architecture, strategic tech transformation, and also as the Head of the IT department.
As the new CTO at ThinCats, Ferguson is expected to serve an important role in spearheading the tech division where he will be responsible for implementing innovative IT strategies.
Thincats has explained that their expertise in SME lending is the product of “a detailed manual underwriting process combined with market-leading data.”
Because of their sharp focus on mid-sized SMEs, ThinCats claims that they have “continually invested in making sure [they] have the best data available to inform [their] decision making.”
The firm also mentioned that their credit risk model, called PRISM, uses several different data sources including accounts filed at Companies House. PRISM models over 2 billion data points “covering every mid-sized SME that has traded since 2007 – around 200 metrics on over 750,000 businesses across 14 years.”
In October 2021, ThinCats had completed their third major upgrade to PRISM. The update has reportedly enhanced the accuracy of the model “to predict future insolvencies and includes a new filter called SPECTRUM which analyses additional real time data.” This is particularly useful given “how different sectors have been affected in different ways as a result of the Covid pandemic.”