Stuart previously served as head of SME at Starling Bank, chief risk officer at ezbob and, most recently, chief commercial officer at OpenPayd.

He joins the specialist SME lender’s business finance division and will focus on the adoption of technology to advance Shawbrook’s infrastructure in addition to supporting the development of new products and to leverage wider initiatives, such as Open Banking.

Stuart’s first task will be to source and deploy a cloud-based commercial lending platform, which will enable Shawbrook to develop and scale-up both established and recently launched products.

“I’ve witnessed first-hand how technology is disrupting the SME finance landscape, particularly in the unsecured space,” said Stuart.

“The really interesting challenge now is to see how technology can help business owners access more sophisticated forms of funding.”

Neil Rudge, managing director of the business finance division at Shawbrook, added: “As a specialist lender, focused entirely on UK SMEs, we’ve built a suite of funding products over recent years to address a breadth of needs.

“We’ll be making a number of investments in technology during 2020 to help us rapidly evolve and develop these products, reduce friction in their delivery and reach more SMEs through slicker distribution.”