Shawbrook Bank has named industry veteran Stuart Doignie as its first head of FinTech strategy and commercialisation.

The small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) lender, founded in 2011, made the hire as it prepares to grow its specialist lending proposition.

Doignie joins Shawbrook following senior roles including head of SME at Starling Bank, chief risk officer at ezbob, and most recently, chief commercial officer at OpenPayd.

In the new role, his primary focus will be on the adoption of technology to advance the specialist SME lender’s own infrastructure, but also to support the development of new products and to leverage wider initiatives such as Open Banking.

Doignie said: “I’ve witnessed first-hand how technology is disrupting the SME finance landscape, particularly in the un-secured space, the really interesting challenge now is to see how technology can help business owners’ access more sophisticated forms of funding.

“With such a diverse range of specialist SME lending products, I believe Shawbrook is perfectly placed to become one of the first institutions to demonstrate how FinTech can be deployed to transform not just distribution but funding solutions too.”

His first task at Shawbrook will be to source and deploy a cloud-based commercial lending platform. This will enable the bank to develop and scale-up both established and recently-launched products, including commercial loan, development finance and growth capital.

Neil Rudge, managing director of Shawbrook’s business finance division, said: “With Stuart’s experience and knowledge across the sector, we’re well placed to create a truly scalable and unique tech infrastructure.”

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