Fundation Group announced that Richard Palmieri joined the firm to lead Fundation’s institutional services and partnerships initiative. The aim of the initiative is to provide technology and loan processing solutions to the community bank and credit union sectors to permit them to more profitably address the small balance commercial loan market.

Palmieri joins Fundation with a wealth of experience within the alternative lending and commercial finance industries. He previously served as the president of two major captive finance companies, Canon Financial Services and Whirlpool Financial, and he led the development of a supply chain finance business while at Credit Suisse.

“Richard’s wealth of experience and industry knowledge has already made him a key addition to the Fundation team,” said Fundation CEO Sam Graziano. “We view his appointment as a sign of our commitment to helping depository institutions to better service small businesses in their local markets. Our strategy is fundamentally different. We plan to empower our bank and credit union partners to help them grow their balance sheets.”

Palmieri is joining an already highly experienced team of industry experts. Fundation’s senior management team is comprised of the industry’s leading experts in technology driven approach to lending to businesses. The team has collectively managed billions of dollars of originations of loans and leases in the small business market.

“Fundation is unique in the alternative lending space. They offer bank-like loan products, but deliver them in a highly efficient and scalable manner,” said Palmieri. “Fundation has focused significant time and resources into developing what I believe is the leading technology platform to automate the application processing and risk analysis processes. These same time intensive processes have kept many willing lenders on the sidelines in this market. I expect that many financial institutions will benefit greatly from partnering with Fundation and I am very proud to lead this effort.”