Alex Collingwood brings over 35 years of experience in trade and supply chain finance

• Corporate Sales & Origination role to focus on growing supply chain finance for MENA and EMEA mid-market companies

21 July 2021 – London. Finverity, the award-winning mid-market supply chain finance platform with a focus on emerging markets, today announces the appointment of Alex Collingwood as Head of Corporate Sales & Origination. This is a new position as Finverity enters a growth phase in providing supply chain finance (SCF) to mid-market companies in emerging markets, the fastest-growing and most underserved segment in trade finance. Alex Collingwood will be in charge of growing Finverity’s corporate client base focusing specifically on the MENA and wider EMEA regions.

Alex Collingwood brings over 35 years of experience in trade and supply chain finance across virtually all business sectors, having worked in senior positions at leading global banks, namely Barclays, DNB Bank and BLME (Bank of London and the Middle East), where he achieved remarkable success in originating, consolidating and growing the trade finance and SCF lending books and operations. At BLME (2017-2019), the largest Sharia bank in Europe, he was Director, Global Head of Trade, Cash & FI, specializing in UK & GCC corporates and private wealth; at DNB Bank (2015-2017) he was First Vice-President, Head of Trade & Working Capital – CEMEA and at Barclays (1985-2015), his last position was Vice-President, Trade & Working Capital, Global Corporates. Most recently Alex was a consultant Business Development Director for the trade finance product suite at EvolutionAI, the data extraction company, since March 2020. Alex Collingwood will report directly to Viacheslav Oganezov, CEO and co-founder, Finverity.

Viacheslav Oganezov, CEO and co-founder, Finverity, commented: “We are thrilled to have Alex on board at Finverity during this exciting time in our growth. Alex’s in-depth knowledge of the trade and supply chain finance industry together with his experience in establishing and nurturing corporate relationships in our regions of focus is an ideal fit for us. Finverity’s SCF platform is increasingly being recognised as a top-tier choice for providing SCF efficiently, reliably and transparently. Alex will lead the origination of sufficient volume of qualifying mid-market risk on the Finverity platform to meet growing investor demand”.

Alex Collingwood, Head of Sales & Origination, commented: “Trade and supply chain finance is one of the last segments of the financial sector to be digitalised and is ripe for profound disruption. The potential for increasing the provision of SCF to corporates beyond the largest multinationals is astounding. One attractive and as yet below the radar sector is mid-market companies in emerging markets or those with emerging market-linked supply chains in the USD 50m to USD 1bn+ turnover bracket. These dynamic and profitable companies have often been overlooked by traditional lenders. The Finverity platform focuses primarily on these clients by meeting their working capital requirements through SCF while offering an attractive yield generation for investors”.

Alex Collingwood added: “The global trade finance gap is estimated at US$3.5 trillion. In making SCF accessible to a wider group of lenders, Finverity plays a key role in bridging this gap by providing investors with the required checks and control mechanisms to invest with confidence. We expect both the non-bank and bank lending pools investing in SCF to increase substantially in coming years as they avail themselves of top-tier technology platforms such as Finverity’s. I'm delighted to be taking up this opportunity to be at the heart of industry innovation and leverage my long-standing experience in global trade finance”.

Alex Collingwood is a member of the Export Credit Working Group, UK Government Finance, since September 2019, a Company representative at the City of London Corporation since 2017 and a Council Member of the Association of Foreign Banks since 2015. He holds the Islamic Finance Qualification Level 3 from the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investments. Alex has a keen interest in education & reducing child poverty and set up & ran food banks during the Covid-19 crisis pandemic, organising over 7,500 fruit & vegetable boxes for disadvantaged children.

About Finverity

Finverity was founded in London in 2017, with the goal of helping to fix the global trade finance gap.

The Finverity digital ecosystem provides the technology, working capital and expertise to make trade and supply chain finance (SCF) actually work for businesses, banks and NBFIs. The digital ecosystem comprises of two complementary offerings:

Finverity Capital, tailored trade and SCF solutions, with two core products:

1. Finverity CapitalAccess empowers ambitious privately-owned businesses to seamlessly access working capital and reach their next level of growth.

2. Finverity CapitalInvest enables funding partners to deploy capital into quality trade assets securely, easily and at scale.

FinverityOS (SaaS), the end-to-end operating system designed to digitally transform trade and SCF operations, client experience and revenue generation capabilities at local and regional banks and NBFIs.

Finverity is growing: In 2022, it increased revenues by 15x, doubled its headcount and initiated expansion into three new international offices. Finverity is backed by 5 world-class VCs and serves clients in 11 countries across the Middle East, Africa and Central & Eastern Europe.