Katrin Herrling

Founder & CEO

Katrin has been managing her family’s dairy farm for more than 15 years. She has helped to grow the farm and transform the operations. The business is much more than a source of income. It is a huge part of her family life.

Katrin has always worked with her bank to finance the farm and ensure smooth cash flow, but ran into difficulties in 2010 when her bank manager doubled her cost of credit overnight.

The frustration of running from one bank to another to secure offers inspired Funding Xchange. Katrin is passionate about making it easy, quick and transparent for businesses to find finance.

It probably helped that Katrin had a parallel career advising large banks and financial firms and understood that they often were not the right answer for a small business that needed funding. So, Funding Xchange sets out to get business owners in the position where they can easily compare terms available from many providers, increasing the chances that one of the offers is going to be right for the business.

Ultimately, Katrin wants Funding Xchange to give you control over finding finance that’s right for you and your plans for your business. Quickly and easily. So that you can continue to build your business and life.

Katrin would love to hear from you. Please let her know if we have helped you find funding or have feedback to help us build an even better service.

Paul Henry

Chief Operating Officer

A growing number of decades driving at successful outcomes for businesses using data and analytics and still a few hairs left on my head.

After moving from completing a Chemistry degree, to teaching PE in a school for a couple of years, the next chapter in my career started in a small boutique consultancy, The pH Group, focussed on helping banks, utilities, insurance companies and other small business service providers identify those businesses with the most appetite for their products and services. This role developed a thirst for data, and using analysis of this data to drive actionable insight.

When the business was acquired by Experian in 2007, new dimensions of credit assessment information and enabling small businesses to contribute their own data to help them find the outcomes they are looking for, created a 360 degree view of a business.

This was a natural pathway to Funding Xchange where helping small businesses find the money they require, has data, analysis and balancing the needs of the SME and lenders at its heart.

As COO I’m involved in most things, having only a thin layer of expertise in most areas, I’m extremely fortunate to be surrounded by genuine experts in their field that make this business tick.

Outside of work, my family, wife, two teenage sons and an energetic dog battle for my time with the urge to go for a run and a garden that never looks as tidy as I would like it to.
Rugby is a true passion having played a little, coached a lot and watched far too much, I still turn out for the odd game of touch rugby on a Wednesday night.

Sarah Hollyhead

Chief Financial Officer

Sarah does the sums at FXE! A qualified accountant with a background in consultancy and private equity, Sarah is also heavily involved in our commercial strategy supporting our vision of building long term sustainable and ethical value for our business. Having spent nearly a decade advising clients on transactions at KPMG, Sarah brings a wealth of financial experience across a broard range of industries. Having become a new mum in September 2019, Sarah combines her role at FXE with raising Max and when she does get a rare moment to herself (!) loves to get an adrenaline fix downhill mountain biking.

Laurence Booth

Chief Data Officer

With a degree in modern languages and European studies, analytics was always the obvious career choice for Laurence. At Funding Xchange, Laurence has the privilege of leading our world-class team of data scientists to explore and unlock the potential of our data to deliver the best outcomes for our partners, our lenders and our small business customers. Previously Laurence led the data and analytics consulting division at American Express where he spent over 15 years, and ran his own analytics consultancy firm serving businesses including Western Union and Crédit Suisse. Outside of his day job, Laurence is a husband and father to two daughters, a non-exec director, a school governor and an avid ukulele player.

Ben Sher

Chief Commercial Officer

Ben is a financial technology leader with 20 years experience in the sector across Capital Markets, Commodities and SME Finance. Prior to joining FXE, Ben held various commercial leadership roles at SunGard and FIS for 10 years before delivering the growth of Cloud Lending Solutions in the SME Lending arena. He is passionate about the creation of value that drives access to capital for SMEs and has regularly spoken in industry forums about the need for broader digital advancement across our ecosystem.

Ben is responsible for the go to market, commercial and growth strategy of FXE with a particular focus on the scaling of our technology business.

On a personal front Ben is keen in keeping fit, growing vegetables in his garden and spending time with his two young daughters.

Ben Alexander

Chief Technology Officer

After completing a degree in Maths and Physics, Ben started his career with a boutique fund management company as an investment analyst and helping out with AML/KYC. In 2009 Ben joined Experian, met Paul, and started managing the analytics and marketing databases, becoming Head of Data Engineering in 2015. Ben brings over a decade’s experience in managing and using data on businesses, especially for analytics, AML/KYC and credit risk. At Experian he also put in place the framework for the use of open data, becoming one of the larger users in the country.

Ben’s passions include seeing and helping other people enjoy their jobs and succeed at them, working out how to improve our interactions with technology to get things done better and wrangling with how data is stored and used.

Outside of work, Ben doesn’t play enough board games, and loves walking along hills.

Linda Wilson

Head of Partnerships

Linda has spent the last decade working with partners in varying roles. Following her recent 4-year stint managing commercial relationships at MSE, Linda has brought her experience and insight to Funding Xchange to focus on building long-term relationships with key partners. Her passion for fighting in the consumer corner, coupled with the drive to help consumers make informed financial decisions, places her well as our Head of Partnerships.

After becoming a new mum in 2020, Linda combines her role at Funding Xchange with raising Noah, running a crafts business and console gaming… when time allows!