Our leadership

Eric currently holds a range of business appointments which include as an advisor, a mentor, a non-executive director, a trustee or a board member. He also advises several innovative technology companies.

Eric was previously Group Chief Executive Officer of the Lloyds Banking Group retiring in 2011. Prior to joining Lloyds in 2001, he spent 25 years with Citigroup in a range of management positions.

Eric holds a Master of Science in Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Arts in History from Cornell University.

Samir co-founded Funding Circle in 2010. He was previously a management consultant at the Boston Consulting Group and an investment executive at Olivant, a private equity firm that invests in financial services businesses in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. In 2015, Samir was awarded a CBE for services to financial services.

Geeta has over 25 years of experience of financial services and retail banking, particularly payments and digital innovation. She was formerly executive Chair of Monitise Europe. Among the many roles in her financial services career, Geeta was Director of Payment Services with HBOS plc and previously Managing Director, UK Retail Bank and Business Development Head EME at Citigroup. She is a chartered accountant.

Geeta serves as Non-Executive Director of Virgin Money UK PLC (where she is chair of the risk committee and on the audit committee), Wizink Bank SA (where she is chair of the risk committee and a member of the audit committee) and Ultra Electronic Holdings plc.

Cath currently serves as Chair of Ustwo Fampany Limited, an independent digital product, games and venture business, as a Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Remuneration Committee at The British United Provident Association Limited (parent company of the Bupa group of companies) and as a Non-Executive Director at Sage group plc. She is also an advisor to a number of small businesses predominately in technology.

She has recently held non-executive roles at TalkTalk plc, the Royal Mail, Home Retail Group, LV= and Telefonica Europe. She previously held a number of commercial roles including marketing and business development at Sky TV, Avon and Next, latterly Marketing Director and Customer Director at O2 and chairman of Tesco Mobile; O2’s joint venture with Tesco.

Andrew spent 23 years working in investment banking as a research analyst in corporate finance, equity capital markets and finally as COO of the Equities Division in Europe of Goldman Sachs. He retired as a Managing Director of Goldman Sachs in 2006; since then he has been involved as an angel investor, Non-executive Director and consultant to several start-up businesses.

Harry joined Accel in 2004 and focuses on software, fintech and consumer internet companies.

Harry led Accel’s investments in KAYAK (NASDAQ: KYAK; acquired by Priceline), Showroomprive (EPA: SRP), Funding Circle (LON: FCH), CHECK24, WorldRemit, Celonis, and Instana.

Harry started his career in Silicon Valley as an engineer at Hewlett-Packard before founding a venture-backed software company.

Harry is from the Netherlands and graduated from Harvard Business School and Delft University of Technology.

Neil is a co-founder and Partner of Index Ventures. In 1992, Neil started the venture capital activity of Index’s predecessor firm, later co-founding Index Ventures and raising the firm’s first fund in 1996. Before starting Index Ventures, Neil spent four years with Montgomery Securities in San Francisco.

Neil is currently a director or observer on various boards of companies based in the UK, Europe and US including Prodigy Investments Limited, Raisin GmbH, Peat GmbH, Nexthink SA and Pitch Software GmbH. He is also a Director of Human Rights Watch.

Bob is a partner at Perella Weinberg Partners and a director of Union Square Hospitality Group. Prior to joining Perella, Bob was New York City’s Deputy Mayor for Economic Development where he was responsible for the Bloomberg Administration’s economic development strategy and job-creation efforts.

As CEO of Wachovia Corporation in 2008, Bob oversaw the sale of the bank to Wells Fargo & Co. and served on the Wells Fargo board of directors until 2010. Bob has also served as the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance of the United States Treasury, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs and a board member of Barclays.

Bob has served as Chairman of Duke’s Board of Trustees, Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, member of the FDIC Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion, Chairman of The After-School Corporation and Co-Founder of SeaChange Capital Partners. He is also a trustee of the Economic Club of New York, Hospital for Special Surgery and the Aspen Institute.

Bob is a graduate of Duke University and the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Lucy is responsible for the Legal, Compliance and People functions of the business. She is also the Company Secretary for the plc. Lucy joined in 2014 and oversaw the process for full Financial Conduct Authority authorisation of the UK regulated business. In addition to working on the acquisition of Funding Circle's European business in October 2015 and a number of capital raises—including a £82m investment round in January 2017—she was part of the core team working on the October 2018 listing of Funding Circle Holdings on the London Stock Exchange. Lucy took on responsibility for the People function in August 2019. 

Lucy was one of the founder members of Kemp Little LLP, a technology focused City law firm, where as head of corporate she worked on M&A, equity and debt financing for financial services and fintech companies. She was managing partner of Kemp Little from 2009 to 2011 when she became Wonga’s first General Counsel and built up the company’s international legal team.

Ed co-founded Betfair in 1999 with Andrew Black and was Chief Executive until 2003, when he moved to Australia to set up the company’s joint venture. He became Chairman in 2006. Betfair floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2010, valued at £1.4bn. Prior to setting up Betfair, Ed spent eight years at J.P. Morgan & Co. as a Vice President in the debt capital markets & derivatives area.

Ed also serves as a director of a number of companies in the UK including Prodigy Finance Limited, Prodigy Investments Limited and The London House Exchange Limited. He is also chairman of Coach Core Foundation and Mental Health Innovations.