Mark Ruddock

Mark Ruddock is an accomplished international CEO with over 20 years of experience at the helm of VC backed technology and fintech startups.Mr. Ruddock’s expertise spans many industries, including enterprise software, consumer-focused mobile applications and online financial services. He has both founded companies and come in as a later stage CEO to help existing companies transform their business models for the evolving digital economy. Mr. Ruddock has played important leadership roles across a variety of industries. Prior to joining BFS Capital, he completed a mandate as interim CEO of 4finance, Europe’s largest online and mobile consumer lender. He was founder and CEO of INEA Corporation, an enterprise software firm focused on the financial services industry which was acquired in 2005. Following INEA, he became CEO of mobile software company Viigo, which he transformed into a multiple-award winning company, whose flagship app became one of BlackBerry’s most downloaded apps of all time by the time the company was acquired by RIM (Blackberry) in 2010. He later became the Managing Director, International at Wonga Group, and was responsible for overseeing all businesses outside of the UK, including consumer lending businesses in Canada, Spain, Poland and South Africa and the eCommerce and product financing business BillPay in Germany. During his tenure, Wonga International developed exciting new products, and grew to over 50 percent of the company’s lending volume. He then joined Finstar Financial Group as CEO of Finstar Labs, their FinTech incubator and corporate innovation arm, before agreeing to step in as interim CEO of 4finance. Mr. Ruddock has been a guest lecturer at Toronto’s York University’s Schulich School of Business, OCAD University, and the University of Toronto. He has also acted as a mentor to a number of start-up programs, including Canada’s prestigious next36. Ruddock holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Trinity College at the University of Toronto