Lisa Jacobs is chief executive of Funding Circle, the London, England, lender that has extended more than $24.1B to UK small businesses. She joined as head of strategy in 2012, helped take the company to the stock market, and in January 2022 took over from founder Samir Desai.
Consulting, Tanzania and India
Before Funding Circle she was a strategy consultant at Boston Consulting Group, focused on financial services. She also worked for NGOs in Tanzania and India.
From Series C to the IPO
She arrived in September 2012 as chief strategy officer of a young peer-to-peer lender. Over the next years she led its capital raising from the Series C round through its listing on the London Stock Exchange, and its expansion abroad through two acquisitions.
Lending Through the Pandemic
As managing director of the UK business, she steered it through the pandemic, when Funding Circle became one of the largest lenders under the government's Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme. She was Fintech Woman of the Year in 2021, and AltFi chose her as CEO of the Year in 2022.
Chief Executive
Funding Circle announced in September 2021 that she would succeed Desai, who moved to a non-executive role after 12 years in charge. "Our machine learning and technology platform is transforming the small business borrowing experience," she said at the time.
In 2025 the company grew revenue 28% to about $273.2M and made a profit before tax of about $27.2M. She came in to help raise money for a start-up that lent to small firms, and she now runs one of the main places British small businesses go to borrow.
