Funding Circle chief turns down £190,000 pay rise
Funding Circle chief executive Samir Desai has rejected a £190,000 pay rise that had been recommended by the firm’s remuneration committee.
In the peer-to-peer business lender’s annual report for 2020, the committee recommended that Desai’s £210,000 base salary, which has remained unchanged since 2017, is increased to £400,000.
The committee said this is needed “to address some of the gap to market, bring the ratio of salary to other compensation more into line with market practice and to begin to reflect the size and complexity of Funding Circle’s operations.”
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However, Desai (pictured), who is one of three co-founders of Funding Circle, said he wanted no change to his current £210,000 base salary in the “current economic and societal climate”, according to the report.
While Desai’s base salary has not risen since 2017, he has benefitted substantially from Funding Circle’s stock market flotation in 2018.
He took home £4.081m in the year that the company went public, most of which came from cashing in share options, according to the 2018 annual report.
Desai’s rejection of a base salary increase means that Funding Circle’s chief financial officer Oliver White, who joined the peer-to-peer lending platform in June last year, was on the highest base salary of £400,000.
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Among the non-executive directors, chairman Andrew Learoyd is the highest remunerated, having earned £190,000 last year.
Funding Circle’s full-year financial results, which were released last month, showed that Funding Circle’s UK arm became profitable in the second half of 2020 thanks to a boost in small business lending and reduced operating costs.
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Funding Circle’s annual report also revealed that the platform plans to enhance the group’s collections and recoveries controls and systems this year, which it said would ensure the appropriate management of borrowers in difficulty, while also maximising investor returns.