Validus, a Singapore-based small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) business account and financing platform, has on Monday announced the appointment of Vineet Agarwal as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Validus Capital in Singapore, effective August 1, 2023.

Validus said in a statement that Vineet replaces Jayanta Roy who is retiring after over three decades of a stellar career in banking and financial services.

Vineet joined Validus in January 2022, where he led the digital financial services and payments strategy, product development and go-to-market plans for the roll-out of Validus’ full-suite SME financial services offering, which includes business accounts, corporate cards, local and cross-border payments, and expense management solutions, in addition to its existing SME loan products.

Prior to joining Validus in 2022, Vineet held various senior leadership roles at DBS and American Express from 2008 to 2021.

“With Vineet at the helm as the new CEO for Validus Capital Singapore, Validus is well-placed to enter the next stage of growth with an innovative approach fueled by strategic partnerships, embedded finance, alternative data, and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven data analytics, and further cement our market leading position in Singapore,” said Nikhilesh Goel, Co-founder and Group CEO of Validus.

According to the statement, the company continues to scale its support for under-served SMEs across the region, with Validus Group growing its loan book year-on-year by 80 percent in 2022 compared to the previous year.

Since its establishment in 2015, Validus has disbursed over $2.8 billion in loans to small businesses in Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand.

According to the statement, Vineet Agarwal is a digital product development and payments expert with more than 17 years of experience in driving digital and data strategies across markets in the Asia-Pacific region with DBS and American Express.

Prior to joining Validus, Vineet was Executive Director, Regional Analytics, Consumer Banking Group and Wealth Management at DBS, where he drove the use of Business Analytics, AI and Machine Learning to solve business challenges across consumer and private banking, and deployed several AI solutions in the region to drive business growth.

At American Express, he drove growth in eCommerce spend via several virtual payment products, a cross-border e-commerce solution and a fully digital mobile loyalty solution.

Founded in 2015 to address the unmet financing needs of SMEs, Validus is growing rapidly across its four markets – Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Its SME-focused, full-suite business finance offering includes loans, business accounts, corporate cards, payments, and expense management.

The company is backed by strategic investors and venture capitals, including Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, Vertex Growth, FMO, NongHyup Financial Group, Norinchukin Bank, Aizawa Asset Management, Lotte F&L, AddVentures by SCG, VinaCapital Ventures, SEA Frontier Fund, K3 Ventures, and Openspace Ventures.

Validus secures first tranche in Series C-1 round from major East Asian strategic investors