Case study

    Machine learning boosts lending money to SME companies

    Funding Circle and Nortal established a Sofia tech hub to expand the UK fintech’s engineering capability and modernize its global lending platform.

    Service

    Data and AI

    Industry

    Financial Services

    From its launch in 2010 until 2014, over $500 million was lent to more than 5,000 companies through the Funding Circle platform. For this short period, the company saw exponential growth and was recognised as one of the top innovative and game-changing businesses in the Financial Technology sector by the FinTech City. At this point in late 2014, Funding Circle encountered the need to grow the size of its technology team to continue to deliver outstanding peer-to-peer lending services and further develop its platform capabilities.

    When growth outpaced the UK engineering team

    To do that with the necessary velocity and efficiency, Funding Circle chose Sofia as a location for their new R&D division and trusted Nortal to help them lay its foundations. The initial agreement was to set up a compact team of Ruby Engineers that would extend Funding Circle’s development capacity. After an intensive recruitment campaign at the beginning of 2015, the first team members were onboarded and integrated into the Funding Circle’s technology division. They formed the core of the Bulgarian team that later turned out to be crucial for the further development of the local R&D division.

    In a few years, the Funding Circle team at Nortal grew steadily, evolving to an autonomous unit with several engineering squads (Ruby, Clojure and PHP) and a technical support one. Nortal’s role in this process was to execute the initial and all of the following recruitment campaigns, facilitate onboarding new team members, and provide ongoing support for the local team with high-quality HR and facility management services.

    Simon Tarry, Head of Engineering, Funding Circle

    “Working with Nortal is awesome. They find and source talented and motivated engineers and provide office and HR resources to help our people have a great onboarding experience and feel at home. Communication is quick and effective, and we have a really smooth and fast interviewing process. Nortal also provides lots of social events for people to get together and get to know each other better.”

    Dedicated Sofia team delivering long-term impact

     

    To date, Funding Circle’s team at Nortal accounts for 40+ Software Engineers and Technical Support professionals that are tasked with crucial development projects for the business.

    The Sofia unit is highly productive and enjoys a great retention rate, with the majority of the initial team members still working in it.

    The success of the Funding Circle’s team in Sofia is due to a mindful talent selection throughout the recruitment process, followed by a careful onboarding and integration strategy and constant HR care that supports the team at a domestic level. All of this results in a very strong team culture and high levels of efficiency and productivity.

    By the numbers

    40+

    engineers in Bulgaria

    £15B

    platform scaled to secure millions daily transactions

    10+

    years of successful partnership

    Scaling tech teams with Nortal

    Funding Circle’s decision to adopt Nortal’ nearshoring strategy proved to be a game-changer in terms of innovation and scalability.

    With the ability to onboard experienced Ruby and Clojure developers quickly, Funding Circle built an efficient R&D division that was deeply integrated into their operations.

    This nearshore model ensured compliance with strict fintech regulations while enabling rapid iteration on their lending platform, leading to faster loan approvals and improved customer experience.

    Jesus Fernandez, Head of Production Engineering, Funding Circle

    “I've personally worked with Nortal for two whole years now, and every day, I happen to appreciate more the quality, response, and counsel that Nortal provide to Funding Circle’s needs. For us, it is important that our guys feel assisted and comfortable in their day-to-day jobs and that any blocker to our working environment is quickly resolved. Nortal would provide quick responses and facilitate recommendations to improve team effectiveness. Funding Circle’s values are definitely embedded within our local team in Sofia and I cannot be prouder of it!”

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