As this year began,
we covered the launch of online innovative lending institution
CommunityLend, Canada's first (and still our only) peer-to-peer lending institution, which connects qualified borrowers and lenders through its website. Mere weeks later,
we wrote that the company was adding to its team.
As of August 31, the company had facilitated overt $600,000 in loans (at an average loan size of $7,500), and had attracted over 2,000 registered members to the site.
As the company continues to grow,
it announced late last month that it had appointed John Philip Green to the role of Chief Technology Officer. In announcing the hiring, CommunityLend CEO Michael Garrity notes that Green helped lay the company's foundation as a consultant when the architecture of the lending operation was being built in 2007. "Shortly after his consulting engagement with us, [Green] was lured away from
Toronto to Silicon Valley to head up engineering for Internet start-up
RapLeaf and then Affinity Labs, before founding his own start-up,
Savvica.
As John's experience and success grew, we had always wanted to find a way to bring him back to CommunityLend," Garrity writes.
Days later, the company
announced a major expansion of its service into British Columbia.
Green started work at CommunityLend August 24. The former CommunityLend CTO, company co-founder Colin Henderson, will move into the
role of Chief Operations Officer and retain his seat on the board of
directors.
Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Michael Garrity, CommunityLend;
StartupNorth