CrowdProperty hires Swoop’s chief commercial officer
CrowdProperty has appointed Damon Walford, who has previously worked at both Swoop and ThinCats, as chief commercial officer.
The peer-to-peer property lender said that Walford (pictured) has 25 years’ experience working for small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) finance lenders. He joins from Swoop, where as chief commercial officer he was responsible for business strategy and overall commercial development.
From 2016 to 2020, Walford was chief development officer at alternative lender ThinCats where he helped to develop the platform’s proposition, establish a nationwide origination team and relaunch the company’s brand.
Prior to this, he held a number of senior positions including regional director at RBS Invoice Finance, managing director at NuFi and managing director – invoice finance at Aldermore Bank.
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“Damon is a fantastic addition to the team and his track record speaks for itself – charismatic, resilient and excellent at creating a climate to realise business-wide growth and success,” said Mike Bristow, chief executive of CrowdProperty.
“We’ve achieved several milestones already in 2021: launching in Australia, closing a £1,800,000 equity funding round and securing a £300m institutional funding line which complements existing diverse sources of capital in providing certainty of funding for property developers.
“Our focus is taking action to further step change the business in order to realise our potential quicker in our mission to transform property finance.
“Damon’s experience of developing fintech companies and significant expertise in the SME finance sector not only strengthens our executive team capabilities but will also be key for realising our long-term vision for the business.”
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“It’s fantastic to be back in a business that combines market-leading technology with sector expertise and adds real value to customers,” said Walford.
“We’re all aware of how tough the last couple of years have been for businesses, so it’s inspiring to see that CrowdProperty has successfully continued to support SME developers – proving to be a more reliable funder than anyone else in the development lending space.
“With a number of major company developments being worked on behind the scenes, it’s a very exciting time to join the business and I look forward to contributing to these plans as we work towards lending £400m per annum by 2024.”
CrowdProperty said it expects to announce several more appointments later in the year.