Steve Paul

Steve has spent his career seeing the challenges that businesses face when managing finances and looking to disrupt the dominance the incumbent providers hold. Training as a chartered accountant through the 2008 financial crisis he saw first-hand from his time in audit the impacts across a wide and diverse range of clients from market listed, to OMBs to large schools and charities. The importance of forecasting at that time was critical and so on leaving practice he became a financial modeller supporting long term planning for a diverse asset management business before joining Lloyds to work on the largest banking divestment of its kind with the carve out and re-establishment of a brand new challenger bank in TSB.

9 years spanning retail banking, payment, card and SME products illustrated to Steve the power the large banks held over the market in that even a new bank with a legacy brand and the creation of the current account switching system (CASS) couldn't make a material dent in the dominance of the large banks market share. Following a spell at Credit Card Fintech Jaja Finance supporting their migration of the Bank Of Ireland customer base and fundraising to enable the Asda Credit Card Launch, Steve has spent the last 4 years at Equals Money supporting the B2C to B2B pivot, acquisition strategy and its European launch culminating in a strategic review which saw its delisting and sale to private equity in April 2025.

Steve's passion is the UK SME market and feels this space is crying out for support in accessing the best in class product and tech in financial services but that will rarely be from one provider. Steve is a proud product of the West Country where he lives with his wife Laura and children Bear and Beaux. Amateur football and cricket careers have been swapped for walking his 2 cockapoos and thinking about his bad golf swing outside Stable.