Sydney, Australia, 16 May 2023: etika, the purpose-driven finance pioneer based on fair and transparent finance, has today announced the appointment of Mitch Partoglou, as the company gears up to further disrupt the finance industry in Australia with unique and fair business finance and lending products.
After a decade in a series of key digital, innovation and strategy roles at National Australia Bank (NAB), including its NAB Labs incubator, Mitch drove 400% sales growth through digital channels and launched multiple new products to market. More recently, in his role as General Manager of Solutions and Insights at Judo Bank, he was accountable for scaling his team to support Judo’s rapid SME growth whilst leading delivery across data, artificial intelligence, credit risk, process re-engineering and automation.
Mitch is also an accomplished entrepreneur in his own right, with a successful track record of building two businesses from scratch and selling them by the time he had graduated from university.
Based in Melbourne, Mitch, with his entrepreneurial mindset and customer-centric product philosophies, is ideally positioned to drive etika’s plans to redefine the business lending space in Australia. Mitch will work with etika’s senior leadership to design and deliver new finance products that will address the difficulties small businesses have typically faced when trying to access lending to fund business expansion.
Mitch’s appointment heralds a pivotal moment in etika’s growth trajectory, as it broadens its product range beyond consumer POS finance. etika’s unique business model of being both a lender and tech platform provider has already seen the company disrupt the consumer finance space, achieving 150% consumer loan origination growth in 2022, with the aim of doubling this figure by 2024.
Commenting on his appointment, Mitch Partoglou says: “For over 15 years I have been looking to solve a customer’s needs. I wanted to find a finance company that shares my values and ambitions of trying to do better things for businesses and their customers, which would enable me to build and scale new products in the market. A lot of people talk about that, but it’s another thing to put it into practice at scale.
“I’m thrilled to join etika at such an exciting time in its growth journey – the company’s ethical principles and mission to promote financial inclusion were huge draws for me, and their ambition to expand their product line is one that I wholeheartedly support. I can’t wait to start working with etika’s outstanding people to deliver fair, transparent and affordable finance to Australia’s hard-working business owners.”
etika currently employs more than 100 people across three locations – Sydney, Melbourne and Manchester, England.
Founded in 2012 by a group of technology entrepreneurs, etika is on a mission to make finance less complicated, fairer and more inclusive. It works to deliver fair finance options in a socially responsible way by bringing clarity to credit agreement terms and conditions, offering fair merchant fees, and no hidden or late fees.
