Fast-growing FinTech Tide has moved to appoint a BMW executive as CTO.
Guy Duncan is joining the digital business banking platform from BMW Group’s Connected Company, where he was also CTO.
The appointment follows a huge £44.1 million Series B fundraise and the launch of new products including Tide Plus and Tide Capital.
Tide, which now has more than 100,000 members, plans to grow its market share to eight per cent by 2023 from its current position of 1.75 per cent.
Duncan joins an experienced executive team at Tide including CEO Oliver Prill, Laurence Krieger, chief operations and product officer, and CFO Ian Sutherland.
“Tide is an exciting company and I am very proud to be joining the team,” said Duncan. “I see the digitisation of banking as still in its infancy.
“There is a huge opportunity to further unpack banking services, making them available in a truly digitally native context. Many small businesses still only have access to basic banking services which Tide can change.
“Our key focus for Tide will be applying clever technology, such as machine learning, to the platform. This can help remove the pain points for customers of banking and admin for small businesses in a scalable manner.
“My vision is for Tide to be a global FinTech leader with a developer-centric environment.”
Duncan has also served at CTO at PayU / Naspers and at BWIN.
Prill said: “Guy will bring a huge amount of passion, energy and experience to Tide. He knows the FinTech sector, having spent a number of years as CTO of PayU, being closely involved in the credit and remittances aspect of the business, as well as managing international operations.
“His experience at BMW’s Connected Company means he has worked with top-tier technology, specifically cloud-based infrastructure and machine learning, and has successfully managed large teams in an agile manner.
“We’re very much looking forward to what he will bring to Tide.”
Tide Plus is an upgraded account giving members additional support for running their businesses. Tide Capital is a subsidiary company allowing Tide to offer its own credit products to members for the first time.