LendingPoint Hires Citibank Veteran as New CFO

LendingPoint, the Atlanta-based online balance sheet lender, announced today that Citibank veteran Tony Martino would be joining the company as CFO. This comes less than one month after the company’s acquisition of LoanHero, a fully integrated, one-stop-shop loan origination and payments platform. LoanHero helps merchants provide access to consumer finance, increase revenue and eliminate friction at point of sale.

Martino, who worked at Citibank for 18 years in multiple roles including CFO for the bank in Israel and Turkey, said he thinks that LendingPoint’s acquisition of LoanHero “triples the size of the markets available to us.”

LendingPoint focuses on making loans to what it calls “near prime” consumers. The company defines “near prime” to include personal-loan applicants with FICO scores from 600 to 700, according to an earlier discussion with AltFinanceDaily. LendingPoint has even trademarked “NEARPRIME” as a single word in all capital letters.

The company’s CEO, Tom Burnside, told AltFinanceDaily in the fall that it received $2.5 billion worth of loan applications in September alone.

“We are delighted to add Tony Martino to our team at LendingPoint,” Burnside said. “His deep experience with multi-product balance sheet lenders as well as his experience in rapidly growing markets match perfectly with where we are in our journey at LendingPoint.”

LendingPoint is not yet four years old and this will be Martino’s first time working at a startup. He told AltFinanceDaily that he’s very excited about this challenge, but acknowledged that his work overseas in emerging markets, like Poland and Turkey, was a lot like working at a startup.

“Although [LendingPoint] is new,” Martino said, “the employees have a depth of experience here.”

Todd Stone was a reporter for AltFinanceDaily.