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Mark Ruddock

Executive

Type
Person
Role
Executive
Updated

The profile

CEO of BFS Capital from November 2018; signed the March 24, 2020 fintech letter and later said publicly why BFS Capital did not make PPP loans.

Identity and role

Mark Ruddock is a Canadian-based technology and fintech executive. From November 2018 he was chief executive of BFS Capital, a small-business merchant-cash-advance and short-term lender then headquartered in South Florida. He is the BFS signatory on the March 24, 2020 fintech coalition letter, and he is unusual within that group: BFS chose not to participate in PPP, and Ruddock said so publicly.

Biography

His own career page describes founding INEA and its acquisition by Cartesis, running Viigo, an international role at Wonga, the group CEO role at 4finance, and his appointment as BFS Capital CEO in late 2018 (career page; we do not have a copy of the Business Wire announcement).

Pandemic relief role

Ruddock signed the March 24, 2020 letter to Congress as CEO of BFS Capital. The letter asked Treasury for flexibility to move "upwards of $500 billion" to small businesses through non-bank lenders and said the signers sought "no gain from this crisis."

In a May 2020 LendIt webinar, reported by Banking Dive, he said: "We chose not to pursue the PPP loans ourselves. We were concerned about back-end liquidity issues, we were concerned about getting onboarded as an approved lender. We were concerned about the way the program is changing." BFS instead referred its customers, in his words, "over to the Lendios of the world and a handful of bank partners" (Banking Dive) and suspended new lending in spring 2020. BFS facilitated no PPP loans.

No PPP enforcement action, civil settlement, borrower-fraud allegation, debarment, or criminal charge involving Ruddock or BFS Capital was identified.

Where they are now (2025–2026)

BFS Capital rebranded to Nuula and Nuula was acquired by Nav (Nav release). His career page lists later roles including Kontent.ai and AFINEA Labs; the 'Series A collapsed' account is cited to his site.

Sources held in this archive

Original source documents and archived captures

  • Noah Breslow — OnDeck CEO under whose company's banner the coalition letter Ruddock signed was published.
  • Ryan Rosett — fellow online SMB lender chief whose firm also ended up outside the PPP loan data.

Sources

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