Xavier De Pauw joins Monument as Director of Lending
Xavier De Pauw has joined Monument Bank as Director of Lending. He brings over 25 years of senior experience in asset-backed finance, lending and digital banking, and will lead the bank's lending strategy as we move into the next phase of our growth.
From challenger banking to private credit infrastructure
Xavier joins us from Kennek, a VC-backed fintech he co-founded to build private credit infrastructure connecting non-bank lenders with institutional capital. The platform onboarded approximately 30 lenders managing £1 billion in loans, with a focus on UK bridging and development finance.
Before Kennek, Xavier co-founded MeDirect Bank, a PE-backed, ECB-regulated challenger bank serving mass-affluent clients across three countries. As CEO of MeDirect Bank Belgium, he built the lending, credit investment, digital savings and investment businesses from the ground up, growing the bank from zero to €1.5 billion in client deposits and investments over four years and helping scale the group to 250 employees. During that time, the bank group deployed €6 billion across asset-backed structures, residential mortgages, leveraged finance loans and covered bonds.
"The mass affluent are an underserved segment in lending just as they are in savings and investments. Their financial lives are too complex for what mainstream banks offer, but they've rarely had access to the kind of sophisticated lending structures that could genuinely work for them. Monument has already built something real for this segment. The opportunity now is to extend that into lending, and I'm looking forward to doing that."
Expanding Monument's offering
We have always known that the mass affluent needs more than a great savings rate. Xavier joins at a pivotal moment as we broaden our product range into lending, giving clients access to solutions built for the genuine complexity of their financial lives.
His remit covers developing lending products designed specifically for our client base and leading our Asset Backed Funding strategy, a central pillar of Monument's next phase of growth. That includes introducing Lombard-style lending, which allows clients to borrow against their investments without liquidating their positions, so they can continue to benefit from their investment returns. Only a few banks have served this segment well in this area. We intend to change that.
"Xavier has built lending businesses from the ground up and structured some of the most complex transactions in UK and European credit markets. That combination of institutional rigour and the instinct to build is exactly what we need as we move into the next phase of Monument's growth. Lending is a natural extension of what we offer the mass affluent, and Xavier is the right person to lead it."
- Ian Rand, CEO
We are looking forward to working with Xavier as Monument's product range grows to serve more of what our clients need.
