Board of Directors

Peter Udale is an entrepreneur with a background in finance, business planning and risk management. Peter established his own investment and advisory business in 1994 providing both start-up and development services to a range of international companies.

Peter has a long-standing interest in the responsible finance sector and start-ups in general.  He was a member of the lending panel for the Fredericks Foundation in Gloucestershire – an organisation committed to providing start-up and development finance to entrepreneurs from disadvantaged backgrounds. He is currently a mentor to a number of tech start-ups at Imperial College, London.

More recently Peter helped establish a community tennis club in his hometown of Winchcombe as a social enterprise in partnership with the local secondary school.

Peter is a Trustee of the Pates Grammar Foundation in Cheltenham and holds an MA in Economics from Cambridge University

Rebecca is the former UK Head of Business Banking at Triodos, Europe’s leading sustainable bank, from 2013 to 2020, where she led the team responsible for business banking activities with SMEs, social enterprises and charities, with particular focus on the environmental, food and farming, and social and cultural sectors. As member of the core management team she also provided strategic vision and governance to the UK business.

Rebecca has a keen interest in improving SME access to finance and promoting the CDFI sector and resilient communities, contributing to steering groups involved with the APPG for Fair Business Banking and Big Society Capital’s “Scaling up Community Investment in the UK”. Whilst at Triodos she was also responsible for the bank’s investment in selected CDFIs alongside BSC via the Community Investment Enterprise Fund.

Rebecca has more than 30 years’ experience in the financial services sector, spanning relationship banking at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, project finance lending in London, and project finance advisory at Grant Thornton prior to joining Triodos.

Tim Rooney is the CEO of Salad Finance Limited – an FCA regulated provider of loans to NHS and Public sector workers.

He is part of a small team of 15 staff and all are passionate about the use of Open Banking data to help near and sub-prime borrowers in the UK. He does not believe that Credit scores serve this population well and that the creation of a mid-cost market can be made possible as outlined in the Woolard report.

Customer wellbeing is of significant importance to Salad and he also believes that the creation of consumer resilience is key to the sector – lending is not always the answer.

He is able to engage with key stakeholders and believe that he can represent the Sector to obtain better outcomes for consumers and providers alike.

He is data driven and focussed on change with a big emphasis on technology.

Prior to Salad he worked with Big Issue Invest and have also worked in Consumer credit data, products and services.

A respected figure in the social investment sector, Matt joined Key Fund in 2002 becoming CEO in 2015. His own experience of growing up in disadvantaged communities fuels a bullet-proof belief in equity of opportunity for all.

Matt has been instrumental in the development of funding models now at the forefront of the social investment movement, particularly blended grant and loan funds.

A secondment at the Big Lottery Fund between 2013 and 2015 saw him contribute towards the early development of Access – The Foundation for Social Investment and their Growth Fund, as well as a number of other funding programmes.

Returning to Key Fund, Matt worked with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, shaping a new Northern Cultural Regeneration Fund in 2018.  Responding to Covid-19 in 2020, he worked alongside other partners to help secure two rounds of much needed grant funding for the sector, totalling over £36m, delivered via the Social Enterprise Support Fund, made possible by The National Lottery Community Fund.

Under his leadership, Key Fund is no longer reliant wholly on grants, with diverse income streams and funding partners.

At Director level, he served 9 years as a trustee (and 3 years as Chair) of a Charity supporting survivors of sexual violence, and also spent 2 years as the interim Chair of the Social Investment Forum.

Matt was awarded a CBE in the Queens 2020 Birthday Honours List, for Services to Social Investment.

Formerly Chief Executive at the Independent Care Group, Lisa spent 22 years working in social housing both locally and nationally, including a spell with the housing regulator and latterly as Chief Executive of a housing association in Leeds.

Lisa joined Five Lamps in 2019 as Group Chief Executive.  A charity based in Stockton-On-Tees, Five Lamps is a recognised and highly regarded social enterprise providing essential services to the local and national community.  They deliver a range of services including domiciliary home care, hospital discharge, youth clubs, employment support for young people and enterprise mentoring and coaching.

Through its Trading Company, Five Lamps provides personal loans to customers who are looking to break out of the high-cost debt cycle.  Five Lamps’ lending allows these customers to develop and build positive credit histories.

As a co-founder of Real Life Reform, Lisa saw first hand the devastating impact high cost lending has on families and communities.  Her passion and vision surrounding the inclusion agenda and the importance of building and supporting communities perfectly mirrors the organisational ethos of Five Lamps.

Lisa’s experience and understanding of the local area is her inspiration and driving force to motivate young people, encourage local enterprise and give people access to affordable lending as well as providing a home care service and regenerating empty homes to provide much needed affordable housing.

Stephen Deakin is chief executive at West Midlands based BCRS Business Loans, which is dedicated to supporting viable businesses that are unable to access finance from traditional lenders.

With an extensive background in accountancy, Stephen has been working in the Responsible Finance sector for the past seven years. During his time at BCRS, as well as overseeing the strategic direction of the non-profit distributing lender and improving organisational efficiency, Stephen played a leading role in securing over £40 million in additional funding via initiatives such as the Midlands Engine Investment Fund (MEIF), the Community Investment Enterprise Facility (CIEF) and other local authority funds

From a sector perspective, Stephen is committed to combatting the overall challenge of accessing affordable credit to lend on and meet growing demand, whilst also increasing the already-impressive impact Responsible Finance Providers have on individuals, businesses and communities.

In his spare time, Stephen is a West Bromwich Albion fan, enjoys playing bass guitar and regularly escapes to Wales with his wife and three children to indulge in his recently discovered passion for surfing.

Charles ran a family business in Cheltenham for more years than he cares to remember before stumbling across the CDFI world after selling the business. Together with a colleague he set up the Gloucestershire Development Loan Fund in 2003, and loved the sector so much he joined the CDFA (now Responsible Finance) as Head of Regions for the South of England and London a couple of years later. The Regional team’s brief was to lobby the RDAs to disburse  money to CDFIs, which they did, and when the team’s contracts came an end, Charles joined the Fredericks Foundation as their CEO which he did until 2015. Since then he joined the Princes Trust’s Enterprise team in Bristol helping Young People and has recently joined the University of Gloucestershire as Project Manager of their ERDF Start and Grow Enterprise program. He feels he should be retired by now but his golf isn’t good enough!

Karen Davies is the founder and chief executive of Purple Shoots Business Lending Ltd, a Welsh not-for-profit Responsible Finance Provider which she set up 5 years ago to tackle poverty, unemployment and financial exclusion in Wales through encouraging entrepreneurship and independence. Purple Shoots does this in two ways:

– offering small loans to individuals seeking to set up or run small businesses who are struggling to find the funding from anywhere else.

– establishing and facilitating self-reliant groups which bring together people left behind by the economy and encouraging them to share and develop skills and experiment with income generating ideas which may lead to employment or self-employment.

Before starting Purple Shoots she had 10 years’ experience in an investment bank, 10 years in a small manufacturing business, a few years as a self-employed translator and prior to that she worked in the City of London for one of the big four firms of accountants. She holds an MA from Oxford University in Geography and an MSc in Economic Development. This “portfolio” career finally makes sense for what she is doing now in Purple Shoots!

Simon joined the Business Enterprise Fund in 2012 as the organisation was growing and meeting the demand for finance following the recession. Business Enterprise Fund is based in Bradford and provides loans to SME businesses in the Yorkshire and Humber and North East areas of England, to help them grow when mainstream lenders can’t fully assist.

Simon enjoyed 27 years with Yorkshire Bank and spent several years in SME Business Banking as well as undertaking roles in Branch management including that of Senior Branch Manager of one of the largest branches in the network. Simon has undertaken Regional roles in Retail and Business Banking, spent time as a Financial Adviser and successfully implemented a large cost saving project for the Bank on a National scale.