Fiinu Plc Directors Biographies 

David is an experienced Board member with over 40 years career in financial services. He is a former banker and regulator with extensive knowledge of financial services and governance.

Prior to Fiinu, David’s experience includes seventeen years at the Bank of England, twenty-two years in Senior Management teams in the UK banking industry and eight years as a Non-Executive Director and External Adviser. As a central banker, David was involved in research, policy, regulation, money and government bond markets, industrial finance and industrial relations, including two years at the Bank of International Settlement in Basel, as Secretariat to the G10 Governors Committee.

At Abbey National / Santander, David was the Deputy Head of Santander Global Banking and Markets UK, and a member of Santander UK senior management team. David was a member of ALCO, Risk and Executive Committees. David was responsible for a Short-Term Markets trading profit centre and for the management of short-term liquidity. After retiring from executive management, David was appointed as iNED for Punjab National Bank International Limited (PNBIL), a retail bank catering specifically to the needs of Indian communities in the UK, where as well as being Senior Independent Director David served as the Chair of Management Committee of Board and Chair of Board Risk Committee.

David was also a member of the Audit and Compliance Committee and Nomination and Remuneration Committee. David is currently also an INED at Masthaven Bank in the UK.

Marko is a successful second-time entrepreneur and the Founder of Fiinu. He is a former elite athlete with a doctorate in artificial intelligence and unbundling banking services. His fintech experience includes over 20 years on Wall Street and in the City of London including ten years with leading banking, treasury, risk and payments companies. He has served as a treasury steering committee member at four DAX-30 companies.

Prior to Fiinu, Marko founded one of the largest overdraft-style lenders in the UK which developed a fully automated software robot that lent and recovered over $1 billion in small increments in the UK without reliance on credit bureau data. His previous business was independently valued at $171 million after five years.

Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Marko was a sales director at Reval, a Wall Street based hedge accounting and quant risk modelling platform. The company was acquired by Carlyle Group, through a $280 million LBO. Marko was a director at Kyriba, an in-house bank and payment factory SaaS platform which became a unicorn after receiving a $160 million investment from Bridgepoint Capital. Marko was also with Trema for six years, helping large incumbent banks and corporate treasuries to manage their risk through straight-through-process automation. The company was acquired by Warburg Pincus, through a $150 million LBO in 2006 and later by ION Group.

Simon is a Senior Corporate Finance / Capital Markets professional with over 20 years of experience advising and executing a wide range of corporate finance transactions, with roles including Main Market Sponsor, AIM NOMAD and Takeover Code (Rule 3) adviser. An agile and highly commercial PwC trained FCA and Chartered MCSI with a broad range of public and private company corporate finance experience across a range of industry sectors, most notably the IT and natural resource sectors.

At Fiinu, Simon brings his experience in the finance and capital markets sector to Fiinu Group PLC as an iNED, having previously fulfilled the same role with Immedia Group PLC.

Outside of Fiinu, Simon works as the CFO of Conversity Limited, a B2B SaaS provider of Intelligent Guided Selling Solutions. At Conversity, Simon has secured over £1 million in finance to further product and sales development and has deployed payroll and IT infrastructure in support of nascent overseas sales operations. Prior to this role, Simon provided PLC and Lead Advisory services with BDO LLP, an international accountancy and business advisory firm, and several Equity Capital Market brokerages. During this time Simon acted as an AIM NOMAD for over 7 years and a LSE Main Market Sponsor for over 3 years.

Through his various roles, Simon has regularly advised company boards on capital markets and corporate action matters.

Mark is the founder and Managing Partner of MWRS, Switzerland, a risk and business services advisory company with an international client base. He is a senior risk and board executive with extensive strategy and turnaround experience in a Tier 1 Investment Banking and Hedge Fund environment. He has a strong track record in enhancing profitability, executing significant risk and operational turnarounds, managing hostile, forensic regulatory investigations, and delivering low-cost operations in Investment Banking and Asset Management environments. Mark has extensive M&A experience and has led numerous due diligence acquisition, divestment and integration assignments.

Prior to founding MWRS, Mr. Wallace was head of risk for Credit Suisse’s Asset Management Division. Previously, he was at UBS Global Asset Management, where he most recently served as Chief Operating Officer, managing the back and middle office functions for UBS’s asset management operation and acting as Chairman of UBS O’Connor’s alternative and quantitative businesses in London. Prior to this role, Mark was Chief Risk Officer for UBS Investment Bank and, since October 1994, headed the Risk Control function. Mark joined the then Swiss Bank Corporation in January 1991, at the time of the joint venture with O’Connor, and was instrumental in establishing the Market Risk Control function in the Investment Bank. Prior to joining UBS, Mark held various posts at HSBC Group, encompassing audit, risk control and corporate finance. Mark has served 9 years on the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) Board of Trustees and continues supporting GARP on key strategic initiatives.

Since 2019, Mark has been making private equity investments and helping start-up companies in the fintech arena gain traction and grow. He is a Chartered Accountant and a Chartered Tax Adviser. He holds a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics. Mark was the GARP Risk Manager of the Year 2002.

Sami Kalliola has 20 years of experience in senior management and C-level positions in B2B and B2C, including 15 M&As. He has empirical experience in business development and strategy and proven skills internationally across different industries, such as Fintech, Telecom and EduTech.

Alongside his role at Fiinu, Sami is a part-time Managing Director of Sandermoen AG, a family office in Switzerland. His previous positions include board member at the University of Fredericton in Canada and senior leader at Multitude Group, Swissphone Carrier AG, Visko Teepak Deutschland GmbH, Investis Life Oy & AG, Oy Eniro Finland AB, and Elisa & Saunalahti. He has been the main negotiator and sell-side co-owner of multi-million EUR exit transactions in the Baltics, Finland, and Canada and a Board member in three financially licensed entities (Asia, India, and Africa). He also has experience in unsecured loan portfolio ownership in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Russia. He studied business economics at Svenska Handelsläroverket in Finland, majoring in foreign trade.