Our Founders
Kristjan Koik
Chief Executive Officer
Kristjan founded Flender in 2015 as a solution for faster access to finance for businesses, and to provide investors with access to a new asset class. Kristjan holds accreditation as an FCA approved person - CF10 Director. Prior to Flender, Kristjan founded and successfully brought to market e-commerce and technology companies including Instacoach, Doclink and financial services company Instacredit.
Oli Cavanagh
Chief Commercial Officer
Oli founded Flender in order to improve access to funding for fast-growing SMEs. Prior to Flender, Oli founded or held senior sales positions in several other technology companies which achieved successful exits,namely fPrint (acquired by HP), CI (acquired by Templar), Alldatasystems (acquired by Autofinder), ChangingWorlds (acquired by Amdocs), and Brite:Bill (also acquired by Amdocs). Oli also founded Instacoach and DOCLINK with Kristjan Koik, before teaming up again to change the alternative finance market in Ireland with Flender.
Jeremy Davies-Betancourt
Chief Financial Officer
Jeremy has been in executive management across finance and research with organisations such as CIT Group / Dell Financial Services and Context. Jeremy sits on Context’s Board of Directors, and was Chief Financial Officer, focusing on corporate structure; tax efficiency; the reorganisation of the finance team; and enhancing FP&A discipline, liaising closely with sales teams.
Credit Team
Colin Barry
Head of Credit
Colin brings 10 years of Financial Services expertise to our team. His experience includes Underwriting at AIB and Portfolio Management at BOI. With his years of analytical credit review experience, his role is to lead our Credit Department through the “end to end” process and ensure that our customer journey is seamless. Colin is a Qualified Financial Advisor and also holds a Professional Diploma in Financial Services.
David Mc Namara
Director and Chairman of Risk Committee
Serving on Flender’s Risk Oversight and Audit committee, David has worked in high yield credit, and intensive and structured debt capital markets, in major international banks including Chase Manhattan and JPMorgan in London.
Nils Koik
Chairman of Credit Committee
As Chairman of the Credit Committee, Nils Koik’s mission is to ensure that Flender has world-class controls to select creditworthy borrowers and protect investors’ returns. Nils has 25 years experience in banking and risk management including 18 years with SEB Bank where Nils was director and chairman of the credit committee of bank branches and in charge of stress testing, risk reporting and credit decisions for SME lending, asset backed lending and consumer lending.
Darren Fitzpatrick
Senior Credit Manager
With over 10 years’ experience in the Financial Services industry, Darren has vast analytical credit review experience. He has also managed teams, lead IT projects and assisted in all aspects of the end-to-end mortgage process including system development, testing and MI reporting. Darren is a Qualified Financial Advisor (QFA) and is in the process of completing the ACCA accreditation.
Originations Team
Barry Hickey
Head of SME Sales
Barry has been in high performing sales management for over 10 years, working with leading organisations such as Eir, SSE Airtricity and CPM Ireland. Barry joined Flender in October 2018, bringing with him a wealth of experience in corporate business development. He has been building, coaching and leading sales teams whilst progressing elite sales executives in the corporate, SME and consumer space.
Colin Canny
Head of Partnerships
Colin has significant experience in new business development,B2B sales and building lasting relationships across the financial services landscape. Colin has worked for a number of leading institutions such as Bluestone Asset Finance,Hays and AIB Bank. In his role with Flender, Colin will be responsible for developing partnership opportunities across Ireland with accountant, brokers and institutions.
Development Team
Oleksii Danylevskyi
Senior Software Engineer
Oleksii is an expert in all aspects of system design, development and implementation. He is an experienced software engineer using Ruby and PHP for 8 years. His main interests lie in Cloud Computing and Microservices. Oleksii has a MSc in Applied Mathematics from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev.
Nitanshu Rehani
Software Engineer
Nitanshu is a proactive full stack ruby on rails software engineer with over two and half years of experience in the IT industry. In addition, he is a highly driven individual with masters in Information System With Computing from Dublin Business School.
MingHsuan Huang
User Experience Developer
MingHsuan has 5 years visual design experience in the IT industry and specialises in web design, visual communication and multimedia design. He is a pure UX enthusiast and holds an MA in Interaction Design from National College of Art and Design.
Board of Directors and Advisory Board
Philip Grant
Executive Chairman
A KPMG trained chartered accountant, Philip was a founder partner of RSM Farrell Grant Sparks. He has bought, developed and managed a variety of businesses over the past 30 years in Dublin, London and New York.
Brian Norton
Senior Advisor to the Board
Brian is a tech and finance entrepreneur having founded leading fin-tech companies such as Future Finance, Supply Finance and Arch Bay Capital. Brian advises board on strategy. Brian received an AB from Harvard University and MBA from UCLA.
Nick Viney
Senior Advisor
Nick has over 20 years experience in building and leading large sales teams at Microsoft, Google & eBay. Most recently Nick served as the Regional VP for Corporate Sales in the UK, Ireland & Africa for global computer security software company McAfee, leading a division of over 150 sales people and a multi-billion Euro budget. Nick has an MA & MSc from the University of Oxford.
Tony McGuire
Senior Advisor to CEO
Tony is an experienced CEO, having led the growth and development of System Dynamics for 19 years to one of the most successful indigenous IT consulting companies. Tony is a Business Advisor Coach for the Enterprise Ireland and provides leadership development/ coaching to organizations.
