Our purpose is clear

We exist to ensure every business has a fair opportunity to reach its
full potential, regardless of any differences they may have.

We make borrower-level intelligence visible, comparable, and actionable, across lower middle market private credit.

In private credit, critical borrower data is often siloed, fragmented, and opaque. This creates blind spots that increase credit risk, elevate costs, and limit access to growth capital for deserving businesses.

GFA Exchange removes this critical inefficiency.
Our secure, API-first platform transforms borrower-level insights into anonymised decision-grade market signals, to remove data opacity and give lower middle market lenders earlier risk visibility, more accurate pricing, and confident capital deployment.

For lenders:

- Reduce portfolio and concentration risk with early warning signals
- Improve risk-adjusted returns with actionable intelligence
- Strengthen regulatory compliance with transparent, data-driven insights
- Enhance origination quality and portfolio performance
- Expand into new markets previously considered too risky
- Boost LP confidence and capital raising

Our Vision

By creating liquidity in borrower-level intelligence, we are building market-level risk infrastructure for more efficient private credit markets - where risk is visible in real time, concentration is managed proactively, and capital flows where it creates the most value.

This isn't just about technology - it's about market-level risk infrastructure that works for everyone.

With over 60 years of combined experience across growth finance, direct lending, global enterprise and fintech, our founding team has funded 800+ businesses, deployed £600M+ in growth capital, and shaped the credit infrastructure that is needed to evolve.

Authentic. Inclusive. Innovative.
These values define who we are, and what we do.

"We believe that borrower performance data is a liquidity class that deserves to be accessible, comparable and actionable, empowering portfolio companies, capital providers and the society we all serve."

Joel Blake OBE, Founder & CEO.

Contact us today to learn more about how we can partner today.

Our Leadership Advisory Team

Our award-winning team brings expertise from deploying capital, building institutions, and understanding real-world portfolio challenges.

Joel Blake OBE
Joel Blake OBE
founder & Ceo
Joel Blake OBE has over 20 years of experience across institutional credit markets, SME lending and UK finance policy. He has supported the funding and growth of over 1,000 businesses and the deployment of more than £250 million in growth capital.  

Outside of GFA Exchange, he is a Board Advisor for fund providers and a sought-after global moderator. He was awarded an OBE in 2016 for Services to Business Support and Enterprise.
Joanna Hill
Mark Trenavin-Body
finance
Mark is the former Global CFO for HSBC ServCo, a £18 billion business unit with the global HBSC Group. He has also held several executive and finance positions within Standard Chartered, Aviva and KPMG. 

Mark is a Fellow of the CMI and the Association of Taxation Technicians, alongside advisory board member of Norwich Business School and the Metropolitan University in Hong Kong.
Liz McKenzie
INvestment
Non-exec director of local government pension scheme; educated as a Production Engineer, including 19 years at Toyota across production control, logistics, cost management, productivity and supply chain management.

Former board director across insurance, and building societies. She is also an angel investor & is Chair of an IoT focused business.
Theodora Hadjmichael
John MacPherson
Strategy
John is a business leader with over 20+ years of extensive B2B commercial experience across asset management, financial services and data management with global firms, across global markets and geographies.

Having previously worked for JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup and Nomura, John brings deep institutional finance expertise in strategic development.
Marcus Scott
Sam Roberts
Product / Marketing
Sam is a Demand Generation expert who helps B2B SaaS companies increase qualified revenue through marketing.

Sam has over 8 years of experience working across early to mid-stage B2B tech companies (from securing series A investment through to supporting the £65 million acquisition of a global CX vendor).

Marcus Scott
Marcus Scott
Technical / policy
Marcus is the former COO of The CityUK; he was instrumental in the work of the ReCapitalisation Group recommendations to UK government on the £100bn
COVID finance debt.

Prior to The CityUK, Marcus built up over 10 years' experience as a CFO for a number of technology companies, developing start-ups and high growth businesses.

Our Awards

We are grateful, with a few reasons for you to be excited! 

Top 50 UK Fintech 2025 - Most Innovative Financial Technologies  
Top 50 UK Fintech 2024 - Most Innovative Financial Technologies  
Best Credit Risk Management Platform - Fintech 2023  
ESG Entrepreneur of the Year UK 2023
(Joel Blake OBE)
Top 20 of UK Fintech50 2023 - Most Innovative Financial Technologies
Awarded one of Midlands Top 50 Tech Disruptors 2023  
Awarded
Fintech of the Year 2022  
UK’s Top 10% Most Innovative Technologies for Financial Services

UK Top 40
Emerging FinTechs
the investment association logo
IA Engine
Innovator Alumni



tech nation logo
One of the 50 most inspiring, prominent, and influential black voices in UK tech 2019
information age logo
UK Top 100 Fintech Startups 2019
tech nation logo
Rising Stars Regional Award Winner 2018


Meet Geoffrey:


FREE AI-powered Financial Health 'Butler' tool for borrowers!

Share Geoffrey with your portfolio companies to improve their financial literacy - better informed borrowers mean cleaner reporting and earlier issue identification.