_{We are building the world's first secondary marketplace for SME financial health data}

Fair. Inclusive. Authentic. These values define who we are and drive everything we do.

Our proprietary solution solves a critical market problem:
‍How do financial institutions de-risk SME lending at scale, without stifling growth?

GFA Exchange is our award-winning SaaS data intelligence layer, powering a new secondary marketplace for SME financial health data. We enable SMEs, financial institutions, and business support organisations to benchmark, monitor, and securely trade financial health insights in one single place.

Why Partner With Us?

For Finance Providers (Challenger Banks / Digital Lenders / Banking institutions / Alternative Lenders / VCs):
- Reduce default risk through early warning signals
- Improve capital efficiency through better portfolio management
- Enhance origination quality of best-fit clients
- Support internal capital raising efforts as a lender

For Regulators and Policy Makers
- Standardised measures for greater market transparency
- Support resilience against systemic and market risk
- Data-driven support to improve access to capital
- Live data and insights to inform policy design

For SMEs (FREE to use):
- Access real-time insights to make better growth decisions
- Compare and benchmark business against peers and the market
- Evidence readiness for investment
- Enhance transparency to meet supply chain and sustainability needs
- Data-driven model to improve support for underserved groups and markets
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‍‍We combine over 40 years of leadership experience across SME finance, global blue-chip environments, financial technology, business growth policy and inclusion to lead at the forefront of a new emerging class of SME risk innovation.

‍For us, inclusive innovation is not a trend. It is the very foundation of who we are, and what we do.

"We believe SME data is a new asset class that deserves to be traded fairly, for the benefit of SMEs, financial institutions, 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 understand practical
and real-life global SME finance and growth challenges.

Joel Blake OBE

founder & Ceo

Joel Blake OBE has over 20 years of experience across SME lending, UK finance policy advisory and supported the funding and growth of over 800 businesses and the deployment of more than £250 million in commercial finance.

Joel is committed to leading sales and partnership development activity. He was awarded an OBE in 2016 for Services to Business Support and Enterprise.

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.

Mark Body

Strategy

John is a business leader with over 20+ years of extensive B2B commercial experience in FinTech, financial services and data management with global firms, across global markets and geographies.

Having previously worked for JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup and Nomura, and was the former Chair of Investment Association Engine Fintech Hub.

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).

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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.
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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.