Financial technology giant FIS has welcomed two hires, Allen Blankenship and Douglas Salom, as it continues to expand its North America supply chain finance business.
They’ll both join the North America sales arm of FIS’s new Supply Chain Finance platform – which was formerly Demica, acquired by FIS in February this year – and report to head of origination in the region, Andrew Holmes.
Blankenship joins FIS in a new corporate solutions role from Wells Fargo, where he worked as managing director for the bank’s corporate and investment banking division for nearly four years.
Prior to that, he also held managing director roles at Deutsche Bank and Citi, across the span of nearly a decade. He was also a corporate banking group head at SMBC for over four years.
As part of this new role, Blankenship will focus on developing the North American corporate market for FIS’s full suite of working capital solutions, including structuring advisory, funding, distribution and reporting.
He will be based in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Meanwhile, Salom – who was most recently a director of bank partnerships at Kyriba, and has also worked with Surecomp and Premium Technology in sales VP roles – will be responsible for platform solutions.
This new position will see him oversee collaborations with banks and other FIs for white label use of FIS Supply Chain Finance’s approved payables financing, receivables financing and securitisation platforms. He will be based in New York City.
New York-listed FIS, which provides banking and payments technology and processes transactions worth trillions of dollars per year, bought London-based Demica as part of its supply chain finance expansion plans.
Demica provided a multi-funder platform for payables and receivables finance, with a focus on corporates with large, complex receivables portfolios.
“The acquisition of Demica by FIS creates an enormous opportunity for our business, now known as FIS Supply Chain Finance,” Holmes tells GTR.
“We are already seeing increased deal flow from the FIS network, so it is imperative that we expand the North America team to take advantage of this opportunity.
“We are so excited to have Allen and Doug join the team – these experienced professionals will allow us to expand rapidly in this market.’’
