Jerome Le Luel leads a global team of data scientists and risk professionals that are expert at small business lending. Their mission is to ensure that Funding Circle deploys world-class optimisation techniques to select creditworthy borrowers and protect investors’ returns.  Jerome was previously in charge of all risk analytics for Barclays globally, leading a team of c.1,000 quantitative analysts in charge of all predictive models and capital computations for the bank. Previously, he was Global Chief Risk Officer for Barclaycard, the cards and payment business of Barclays, managing a £40 billion lending portfolio across Europe, Africa and the US through the economic recession. Prior to that, Jerome spent 12 years with credit cards specialist Capital One, joining at start up stage as marketing optimisation analyst.