Tony Nicol is chief financial officer of Funding Circle, the London, England, lender to UK small businesses, and has served on its board since January 2025. He joined in 2018 as director of finance and spent six years inside the finance team before taking charge of it.
Bristol and PwC
He holds a BSc in mathematics from the University of Bristol and is a Fellow of the ICAEW. At PwC he rose to assurance director, auditing and advising public and private businesses.
IG Group
He then became group financial controller at IG Group, the London-listed trading platform, responsible for all its financial reporting, budgeting and forecasting.
Six Years to the Top Finance Job
He joined Funding Circle in 2018, the year after its listing on the London Stock Exchange, by which point it had lent billions of pounds to British small businesses, and worked through the pandemic years when the company became one of the largest lenders under the government's emergency loan schemes. On January 1, 2025, he joined the board as chief financial officer, working with chief executive Lisa Jacobs.
His First Year
In 2025, his first year in the role, Funding Circle extended about $3.28B of credit and grew revenue 28% to about $273.2M, with a profit before tax of about $27.2M. He came in to help run the books of a newly public lender. Seven years later he signs off on them, at a company that has now lent more than $24.1B to UK small businesses.
