Behind every successful company stands a strong business strategy and, most importantly, the people responsible for it. We are strengthening our team with two highly experienced professionals who recently joined Hive Finance Group: Group Chief Operating Officer Anete Pallo and Group Chief Risk Officer Alexander James.
Let’s get to know them better.
Group Chief Operating Officer: Anete Pallo
As Group COO, Anete will play a key role in our company. Her experience in banking, fintech, and the legal sector will undoubtedly strengthen our team’s expertise.
In her previous roles, Anete gained experience in product strategy and development, sales strategy implementation and cross-functional project management.
The Big Wins
Throughout her career, Anete has had the opportunity to lead organisational transformation initiatives that significantly improved the efficiency of the business. One of Anete’s proudest career achievements has been developing and implementing automation and digitalisation strategies that significantly enhanced operational performance. In some areas, process efficiency improved by more than 40%, while profit more than doubled.
She also played a leading role in launching new products, including leasing services at a bank and installment financing products at an Eleving Group company.
Why Us, Why Now?
When we asked Anete why she decided to join the company at this particular stage and what goals she has set, she says:
“I have always been drawn to ambitious and goal-oriented companies that are ready to take action and turn their vision into reality. This is exactly how I see the Hive Finance Group companies. I am also convinced that effective and well-organised processes can help a company achieve remarkable results. That is why it is so important to challenge ourselves continuously, encourage our teams to grow, and never be afraid to improve practices that may have remained unchanged for years.”
We believe that Anete’s leadership style, built on the principle that “success is achieved together”, will undoubtedly strengthen the team and improve the company’s results.
Group Chief Risk Officer: Alexander James
Alexander has been advising our business for some time, so he is already very familiar with our company. By officially joining the team, he brings not only his expertise but also a deep understanding of our business.
Alexander has extensive risk management experience across the fintech and consumer lending sectors. Over the years, Alexander has specialised in portfolio management, credit risk management, automated underwriting, credit risk scoring, and risk policy development.
The Big Wins
Numbers often speak louder than words, and Alexander’s career is no exception. Alexander shares some of the milestones he is most proud of: “Advisory and delivery work with lenders in over 17 countries, through a consultancy I built from scratch into an international specialist credit risk practice. Hands-on management and optimisation of lending portfolios typically ranging from $10 million to over $100 million, helping several of those businesses prepare for larger institutional funding and scalable growth. And credit strategies built across six or more distinct lending products serving materially different customer segments.”
Why Us, Why Now?
We believe that his expertise in AI technologies will have a positive impact on our entire business. He thinks that the combination of technology, AI and data creates a chance to rethink how lending decisions are made, making them more accurate and fairer for customers.
After asking him what’s his gut feeling about where the group’s biggest potential lies, he says:
“Our biggest opportunity is becoming a learning organisation where every lending decision makes the next one better. Modern AI lets us understand customer behaviour far more accurately and test new strategies rapidly. Instead of making broad policy changes across an entire portfolio and hoping, we can learn safely, iterate and double down on the segments showing the best early performance. Over time, those advantages reinforce one another: better decisions mean faster customer journeys, more accurate pricing, lower losses and stronger long-term relationships. That compounding effect is what will separate us from traditional financial institutions”.
We believe that his philosophy, that “sustainable growth doesn’t come from taking more risk, but from understanding risk better than everyone else”, will help ensure the safe and sustainable growth of the entire group.
What Will Change?
Although these are new additions to the Hive Finance Group team, we believe their expertise will bring positive changes very soon. Loan originator processes will be further strengthened to ensure that growth is not driven only by increasing lending volumes, but also by stronger processes and risk management. The new team members will also work on the scoring model, which is one of the key tools for managing customer default risk. In addition, with experienced senior-level professionals joining the group’s management, decision-making will become more structured and data-driven.
We wish Anete and Alexander success in their new roles and look forward to seeing the positive impact they will have on Hive Finance Group.
