Scotland’s only lending financial technology (fintech) company announced that it has appointed a new Chief Marketing Officer this Friday. Darren Cairns joins LendingCrowd in its Edinburgh office and will look to help grow the firm’s investor and borrower base.

“I am excited to be joining such a dynamic company as LendingCrowd,” said Cairns. “I loved the ambitious plans of Stuart and the LendingCrowd team and I believe with my start-up experience I can help them make this business a real fintech force.”

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Founded in 2014, LendingCrowd is, as its name suggests, an online lending platform. It allows small-businesses to get access to funding and also allows investors to put their funds into companies they think will succeed.

Since going live four years ago, the company has provided loans – valued at a total of £46 million ($59.05 million) – to more than 530 different companies.

LendingCrowd Standard Life

The company gained some publicity in October of this year when it managed to onboard Sir Sandy Crombie as Chairman. Sir Crombie is the former Chief Executive Officer of investment giant Standard Life and was also previously a Non-Executive Director at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Cairns will be a welcome addition to the company’ team given his past experience in the lending space. He joins from Neyber, a London-based loans company, where he spent the past year as CMO.

Prior to this, he also spent two years at 4finance, another fintech lender based in London. Working as CMO, Cairns saw the company’s lending grow to €1.1 billion ($1.25 billion) during those two years.

“We are delighted to welcome Darren to our growing team,” said Stuart Lunn, founder and CEO of LendingCrowd. “His experience and expertise will be a valuable asset as we continue to serve the country’s small and medium sized businesses by building the most exciting fintech lending company here in Scotland.”