Podcast interview: Michael Ellis, Head of Sales

In our latest episode, Georgiana Campbell chats to Michael Ellis, our Head of Sales about his career in invoice finance in the UK and Australia; his thoughts on the direction of our industry, and his tips for those just starting their career.

To listen to this interview on our podcast, click here.

Georgiana Campbell, Dancerace Marketing Manager:  To kick off: how did you get into the invoice finance industry, Michael?  

Michael Ellis, Dancerace Head of Sales:  I didn't get into it on purpose, which is probably what most people in the industry also say!

I've always been fascinated by business. It never ceases to amaze me what people do and can succeed in, so when I went to university business was the obvious choice for me. It was the first time I’d ever enjoyed something academically and quite natural that I joined Lloyds Bank when I left education.

I started my job at Lloyds on 18th of September 2008, which happens to be one of the most meaningful days in recent UK banking history. Do you know why?

GC:  Because that’s when you started in banking?

ME:  Not quite! That was the day that Lloyds agreed the bailout terms for HBOS. At that point, a £10.8bn loss had occurred and there were concerns it would be only days or weeks before a UK bank that was ‘too big to fail’ would fail.

On my first day at Lloyds in Gresham Street, I saw Eric Daniels taking a moment to calmly celebrate the HBOS bailout, though I didn't realize that was what happened until months later.

It was a fascinating time to join because the whole climate of banking changed in the same moment. People had to flip from just growing and lending more to considering different product types and suitability and security. Invoice finance was probably one of those products that considered itself to be recession-proof. So, while I didn't start there, Lloyds was actually my first step into IF.

GC:  That's an incredible timeline for you career wise.  

ME:  It was really just the first part, but I'm so fortunate because it was such a strong grounding. At Lloyds I was working in the Area Director's office and was able to see how the business structured itself, the strategies it put in place for bad books, how to manage distressed portfolios and how to create incentive campaigns to drive growth.

I was young then and I'd moved around the Northwest of England for a while. I decided that the Northwest was too small a place for the person of my ambitions, so I joined Bibby – then a global invoice financier – on their global management program.

I didn't realize at the time that that meant spending 18 months in Leicester to start off the program. There were moments when I questioned quite how global things might end up, but it was great. I got a real solid foundation and understanding from an established team that really knew how to coach people. 
I worked on a few product-specific campaigns at Bibby, but my role was really all about sales and building great customer experiences. Going back to that point again of understanding businesses, getting out there, sitting with people, understanding their problems, pain points or opportunities and helping them understand how invoice finance could solve their problems and take the shackles off their growth. Or even just help their director sleep at night!

At Bibby I moved to Australia, joining the business when it was going through transformational change, including the appointment of an MD and a new change director. They were trying to get a lot of the best practice out of other parts of the business, in a two-way exchange. There was best practice in the UK, but also new opportunities that were unique to Australia that could be shared elsewhere as well.

What I enjoyed most while at Bibby in Australia was using technology to drive efficiencies and change. That happened operationally – we looked at risk-processing and putting new systems in place to save huge amounts of time – and driving better value to customers.

I most enjoyed the sales-focused stuff. We were thinking about onboarding journeys and how we could make sure we were always delivering value by understanding our customers’ objectives.

I carried on with Bibby for two and a half years, and there was a bit of to-and-fro about mergers and acquisitions with the company’s largest competitor – which happens to be a Dancerace client today – Scottish Pacific or ScotPac as we now know them, who acquired the Australian and New Zealand part of the business.

I was fortunate to be part of that transition, working on a few campaigns and national partnerships, making sure we didn't have data divides, building consistency across the business, and leading some tech innovation around digital onboarding. That would go on to become a big thing in the pandemic.

I came back to the UK really inspired by what technology can do and made it my mission to work with a lender that had technology at the core of what they did. That happened to be a company called Growth Street.

Growth Street had a great proposition. It was effectively an ABL approach to lending to SME’s and opening up a product set that people hadn't been able to access before, using open banking and open accounting at a very early point for the industry. Unfortunately, changes in peer-to-peer confidence and funding structures meant it didn’t achieve the growth it needed.

At least half of that business was perfect and would still be fighting fit and very competitive today. As much as they struggled and ultimately aren't with us now, they did a lot of good work and supported a lot of businesses.

GC:  Then you made a move into tech, didn't you?  

ME:  I did. Not deliberately; I was open to all opportunities within commercial finance, but Riskfactor – now Lenvi Riskfactor – was something that I'd used before at Bibby. I joined as chief commercial officer to drive international growth, before moving into a MD position.

This gave me great insights as I really got to learn about the different objectives of lenders across the industry.  It was surprising how many common issues lenders face but how differently people approach them, and how differently they prioritised problems. We have a lot to do in our industry, and that really shouted out to me.

That’s one of the reasons I moved to Blackstar Capital. Then, Blackstar was navigating the changes around embedded finance and around making sure the connection between lender and technology delivered the best customer experience.

The idea of having sophisticated decision-making behind the scenes while serving finance at the point-of-need is exactly what embedded finance is all about. That was a real eye-opener for me and a huge opening still exists in the market today. It might be some unfamiliar faces that capture that opportunity first. It could even be a collaboration between parties, particularly when you consider payment gateways and alternate data sources.

A lot of lenders are excluded from that picture right now. So, it's about how they can open those doors. How can they capture those opportunities?

That leads me to Dancerace!

GC:  In your invoice finance career, you've worked across the lending side and the technology side. At Dancerace, you're back on the technology side. What motivated this move?  

ME:  I knew Dancerace well through partnerships and previous client projects and had worked with the Dancerace team before. So, the first big tick in the box was really the cultural fit. It’s always helpful when you know who you'll be working with!

That's half the battle really, to make sure you have a similar mindset with regards to effort and having a can-do attitude, or knowing when to strap the seatbelt on and work hard to deliver. That focus on delivering positive outcomes is key for a company like Dancerace.

The other side of it is the product. The Dancerace OS is a mature platform that has been around for 30 years. We've delivered heaps of innovation in that time – being the first cloud-based IF operating system, for example – right up to the present day.

It’s this product roadmap that's really exciting. Dancerace offers a strong product today but the future is even brighter. In 2024, we brought to market r3 RiskOps, a completely different way for invoice finance lenders to manage risk processes. It’s one I think makes an awful lot of sense on the lender-side. I consider myself a lender, ultimately, and that's exactly what I would want to purchase if I was starting a business now. 
We’re also focused on being customer-centric in our approach. I don't just mean by supporting lenders, but by helping to facilitate the best outcome for SME borrowers. Having that goal in mind really holds Dancerace in good stead.

GC:  What areas of technology are going to have the biggest positive impact on invoice finance over the next five years?  

ME:  I think people might be surprised if I don't rush to the obvious answer, AI. But AI is only one factor within what I think is the most important change that will occur in our industry: namely, how we handle data. This isn’t a new consideration: the IF industry should have been focusing on it two years ago. We’ve been talking about it for even longer! 
I previously worked at companies on both the lender and technology-side where the business handled and considered data for a specific purpose. That's great, but I think it will be increasingly important for lenders to consider the concept of ‘data gravity’: the idea that platforms or systems have a significant amount of data within their applications, and therefore ‘pull’ other external sources towards them. Software systems have become the central hub or the heart of where people work, day to day.

Dancerace is well placed in this regard because we host so much transactional information – not just for one individual client but for all of our clients’ customers. And we work with partners to handle open accounting, open banking, credit reference and other types of data.

I think the key is making sure we structure this data appropriately so that we can build upon these large datasets at an industry-level. This way, data will do more for lenders than give lending insights; it will automate their decision-making. We’re seeing a shift towards this way of thinking already.

At Dancerace, we’re focused on making sure lenders aren't spending their time chasing, collating or presenting data. Instead, we’re helping lending teams to understand their data and use it to find solutions for and communicate effectively with borrowers.    Customer experience is part of the equation, but there’s another part which is currently under-considered by many lenders. This is the fact that frauds and cyber threats are getting more complex.

As an industry, we need to be more sophisticated in how we handle our data and structure our processes to make sure we're not just lean and fighting fit for the good times, but have a really strong and robust set of systems when challenges or threats occur. Making the decision to work with a provider like Dancerace instead of developing software in-house gives lenders dependable, reliable systems and processes to deliver efficient and effective customer experiences safely.

Data – how we capture it and structure it – is really at the heart of that.

GC:  On the cybersecurity point, we have the brilliant David Hayes. He's definitely someone lenders should have a conversation with as we move into a more complex security world.

ME:  That’s one of our strengths at Dancerace, that we have experts in these fields looking at it from a tech perspective. I'd like to think that any of our lenders can access those individuals at any point. And perhaps that's underutilized day-to-day.

Part of my job working with you in marketing is to make sure we bring everybody to the forefront of the business.

GC:  I could not agree more. Can you talk about some of the things that Dancerace are doing today that will drive some of the impacts you’ve covered so far?  

ME:  Well, right now we’re onboarding two tier one banks, in addition to supporting 75 lenders worldwide with their own roadmaps and change. When we develop new features for clients of any size with a good idea, we make sure we deliver that new feature to all our lenders.

For example: we might take the work we’ve done on single sign-on for a banking client and share it with our whole client base. Another lender might require us to conform to SOC 2 safety standards, which benefits our whole lender community.

Our product strategy is focused on making sure that we capture and retain that value for everybody. Ultimately, we're focused on delivering best-in-class and invoice finance and ABL systems. And whatever the size of client, those needs are often the same. 

In 2024 we brought  r3 RiskOps to market. r3 deliberately focuses on doing things differently, but automation and workflow tools are at the very centre of everything users can do in the system. One of our key drivers is to get this system in front of risk and operational heads so they can bring it to life with their portfolio and their data. That’s really powerful stuff and a lot of the work we’re doing at the moment is to make sure lenders get familiar with our platform and the power of it.

When we talk to people up and down the country, they tell us how hard it is to hire or train good people. Technology needs to do a lot of the heavy lifting in that. With a system like r3 RiskOps, lenders can truly digitise their operational and risk processes, so that their people can focus on specific clients. Something we really believe in is exception-based policies and processes. These mean lending teams don’t have to be looking over their shoulder or around the corner all the time. They've got the ability to spot the parts of their portfolio that are highest risk and need most of their time and attention.

That functionality exists today, and everything in our roadmap is focused on doubling-down on this approach. It’s about how we support lending teams to do the jobs that need to done and to really help them focus at all steps in the lending journey, from the cradle to the grave of a lending facility.

That starts from the first interaction: giving offers, managing onboarding, getting clients set up for first payments. Then, how lenders can manage clients efficiently and solve problems they might have. Making sure lenders can bring extra products to market to serve borrowers as their needs change. Or, enabling lenders to spot and solve bad outcomes, by collaborating with clients or holding them to account to recover situations successfully.

GC:  You’ve been at Dancerace for a few months. What are you enjoying most so far?  

ME:  Well, we've got a very considered roadmap that has been developed over a sustained period of time. It's constantly under review. We engage very heavily with our clients and prospects to make sure that we prioritise effectively. And we're listening to the market when we put new innovations out there. I really like the level of ambition behind it. We’re focused on putting Dancerace at the centre of change for the industry.

Some of that is around best practice or how we can put service and support models in place that help lenders when they're trying to drive the adoption of new technologies like open accounting. That’s a powerful technology that delivers insightful data, but it's only as good as the adoption of the technology across the market.

So, we want to make sure we're working to not only make great products, but also helping lenders to use them. Ultimately, that where our success comes from. It's not just about us being technology providers. There are so many of us here at Dancerace that are lenders that we can genuinely get out and speak to people with confidence and share our own best practice.

GC:  You make a good point. We have so many people at Dancerace who are from the invoice finance industry, so there's no waiting for them to catch up on sector knowledge.

ME:  That's key, because ultimately it allows us to have that internal feedback cycle between our development, product and lender-facing teams. When we have questions, we can do a lot of work internally to deliver meaningful updates to our lenders without using lots of their time asking questions.

GC:  You've had a very interesting journey up to this point. What's some advice you'd give to your younger self?

ME:  Well, not just to myself but to anybody who's younger and starting out their career: I think initially you need to say ‘yes’. So often, people can be fearful around not knowing something, but as long as you've got the right attitude and you have that mindset to say I could do that or I can learn how to do that,  then you really can do anything. 
Everybody has to start somewhere, so it’s crucial to have that mindset. One thing I would caution though is there does come a point where from time-to-time, one of the best things you can do is say ‘no’.

Sometimes you can get requests that come in that aren’t aligned with your core objectives and goals. Being diligent and strict with enough with yourself to actually say ‘no’ and still do it professionally is probably the most professional thing that you can do because it helps you drive the most value and contribution to your clients, colleagues or ultimately yourself when you want to achieve big things and reflect at the end of the year.

You've got to step into it and say ‘yes’ and have a can-do attitude, but you've got to know when to say ‘no’. It takes a while to figure out that balance, and I don't think anybody ever gets it completely right. Operating in the grey is probably the most challenging and frustrating thing for everybody!

GC:  I'm definitely glad you addressed the need to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’. It's a fine line and as a marketer, things will distract you from your ultimate goals.

Final question: what are three things you'd pack for a desert island and why?  

ME:  This is probably the hardest question to answer of the lot, because it's so revealing, isn't it?

What would I have packed if I found myself on a desert island?  Probably nothing that I needed, but an awful lot of stuff. I tend to pack last-minute and I've always had this attitude that if it's that important, I'll be able to buy it when I get there. The desert island might be the first time that doesn't work out for me.

There's probably a more emotional answer that I could give around bringing my family along, but I'm not sure it's a good ‘dad’ move to take your kids to a desert island if you're going to make it back.

Maybe the answer is an insight into how logical I can be. So: a boring answer, but I’d pack simple stuff like sun cream, a water filtration device and if I'm going to give myself one thing to entertain myself, a football.

I can finally learn to do kick-ups because I'll have a bit of time on my hands. And if the worst comes to the worst, I can always recreate that scene from Castaway with Tom Hanks talking to his new friend Wilson. That's a balanced but logical answer.

GC:  I think we all need our own Wilson. Out of everyone I've spoken to so far, I think you're the only one that might actually survive on the desert island!

ME:  Yeah, maybe. Although I’d definitely need the sun cream.

GC:  Michael, thank you so much for sitting down with me. We're recording this towards the end of the year and we're all rushed off our feet in the best possible way.

No worries. I've enjoyed listening to the other ‘meet the team’ interviews. I'm just happy to share some stuff and look forward to putting some product-specific podcasts out there in future, too.

GC:  Stay tuned – you heard it here first!

This article was originally published on our LinkedIn page.