Dave Gilbert, founder of National Funding, a fintech focused on delivering business financing and services to small- and medium-sized businesses, launched his latest initiative in the fintech space: FairSquare, a new holding company comprised of four financial and business services brands, including National Funding, QuickBridge, SmallBusinessLoans.com and Finova Capital.
“Looking at the depth of expertise and billions of datapoints we’ve accumulated across our diverse brands, we have a wealth of proven performance models through which we can elevate and amplify the financing experience for millions of U.S. SMB owners,” Gilbert said. “This unprecedented amount of information provides our brands with mature risk and pricing data to confidently inform deeper, compliant lending criteria and allows us to serve a wider range of applicants. We’re excited to have several of the fintech industry’s leading experts on one team to help SMBs solve critical financial and business services challenges. Today, I’m proud to make an initial announcement introducing some of the outstanding leaders who have joined our mission to help SMBs thrive.”
The FairSquare team is comprised of:
- Trent Ziegler, Chief Financial Officer — Ziegler has distinguished himself in previous financial leadership roles, most recently as chief financial officer at LendingTree. His career has focused on building fintech organizations that have the capital foundations, technological innovation and rigorous cost modeling to provide critical funding for SMBs. A well-recognized fintech leader, Ziegler was named to the Institutional Investor All-American Executive Team [2017 – 2020] and IR Magazine’s “Best Investor Relations Officer” (Small & Midcap) [2019 and 2020].
- Chris Panebianco: Chief Customer Officer — With a 22-year results-driven career in marketing and advertising, Panebianco’s role is to ensure that entrepreneurs confidently turn to FairSquare’s brands as their long-term providers of funding and business services. His focus is on the intersection of user experience excellence, diverse brand offerings, integrated communications and customer-centric performance marketing. Prior to joining FairSquare, Panebianco served as chief marketing officer at BHG Financial, where he was a key driver in funding over $9 billion to business owners and building an institutional network of 1,400+ community banks. He was also the interim chief marketing officer at Funding Circle U.S. previously.
- Ashish Gupta: Chief Risk Officer — Gupta is responsible for building best-in-class data science, credit risk and analytics teams for FairSquare brands. He oversees the development of sophisticated models for credit, pricing, fraud mitigation, collections and AI and machine learning models. In his previous experience, Gupta held leadership roles at LendingPoint (chief risk officer) and Prosper (chief credit officer) as well as senior risk management roles at Citi and Fair Isaac.
- Daniel Almazan: Chief Technology Officer — Almazan brings over 25 years of IT experience to FairSquare. His team is responsible for delivering technology roadmaps that lift and align FairSquare’s diverse fintech platforms. In his most recent IT leadership role, Almazan was senior vice president of technology and architecture at LendingPoint. There, he and his global development team integrated software, network and telephony platforms that empowered the funding of over $8 billion in consumer financing, delivered through offers in an average response time of under six seconds.
- Kurt Gering: Chief Human Resources Officer — Gering believes it is crucial that an entirely online financial services company like FairSquare reflects the humanity behind its technology. He does so by fostering a workplace community that embraces change and is comfortable seizing ever-evolving opportunities to drive positive customer experiences, business improvements, professional growth and personal satisfaction. Prior to joining FairSquare, Gering headed human resources for the San Diego Aviation Authority.
“FairSquare will expand and amplify our brands to improve SMB access to trusted financing and business solutions,” Gilbert said. “The all-star professionals we’ve gathered to meet this vision are fintech innovators who have dedicated their careers to solving the myriad of financial, technological and operational challenges SMBs face. Like the entrepreneurial community we serve, we too are optimistic about the future we’re building, together.”
