January 10, 2017
Fora Financial Features: Andrew Gutman
Role at Fora Financial: Chief Financial Officer
What does your position involve: My role encompasses a wide variety of responsibilities at Fora Financial. I manage the Accounting, Finance, Risk & Analytics, and Human Resources functions. This keeps me busy with anything from raising capital and preparing our budget and forecasts, to evaluating the performance of our portfolio, to setting company policies and culture. I also work closely with our Executive Team to develop company strategy and to implement the tactics needed to achieve our goals.
How has the company evolved since you came on board? On the surface, we look so much different than when I joined almost three years ago. We have moved into a spacious new office, added a private equity partner, promoted and hired so many talented people on the way to expanding our capabilities and doubling our originations. Despite all of these big changes, at our heart we are still the same friendly, roll up your sleeves, entrepreneurial, founder driven company.
What’s the biggest change you’ve noticed in the space this year? 2016 was a year where the marketplace lending space experienced a few bumps in the road. We’ve seen some of the bigger and older names suffer setbacks after several years of rapid growth, high investor demand and increasing competition.
What keeps you up at night? I’m a CFO, everything keeps me up at night! We are always striving to identify opportunities to improve, and my primary focus is to capitalize on those areas of opportunities to deliver results for our stakeholders and employees. As long as I am fulfilling my commitment to drive value for Fora Financial, I might sleep a few hours at night!
What do you think is in store for Fora Financial in 2017? I feel like I am always excited heading into a new year, and this year is no exception. While I don’t have a crystal ball, I can honestly say that in terms of our people, our stakeholders, our business strength and our many years of collective experience in this space, we are better positioned than ever to make 2017 our most successful year yet.