Encina Lender Finance made several senior executive promotions and key new hires to support its next stage of growth. The promotions are as follows:
Geoff Beard – Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer
Beard joined ELF in June 2024 as co-CEO to lead the firm’s consumer/SMB vertical. In his new expanded role as CEO and CIO, Beard will have responsibility for ELF’s investment, credit risk, asset management, operations and finance functions. He spent the previous 25+ years working at the intersection of specialty finance and fintech, both as a principal investor and investment banker. His principal investment experience spans asset-backed credit facilities, forward flow asset purchase programs and preferred equity / convertible debt across the consumer credit, small business credit, secured real estate credit, point-of-sale finance and student lending sectors both in the U.S. and numerous foreign jurisdictions.
Joe Ressa – Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer
Ressa joined ELF in October 2023 as the firm’s CFO. In his new expanded role as CFO and COO, Ressa will have responsibility for ELF’s finance and operations functions, including accounting, reporting, FPandA, tax, treasury and borrowing base management. He has held a wide range of executive level positions during his 30+ years in the commercial and consumer finance industries at companies that include GE Capital, Synchrony Financial and White Oak Credit Services.
Jeff Carbery – Managing Director, Co-Head of Asset Management
Carbery joined ELF in April 2023 as managing Director, risk for the firm’s commercial vertical. In his new role, Carbery will co-lead ELF’s asset management function, which includes monitoring asset-level and enterprise-level covenant compliance, tracking broader enterprise-level financial trends at the originator/servicer and overseeing all modifications to underlying documentation in coordination with the investment and credit risk team. Carbery has 35+ years of experience in lender finance and asset-based lending, including as group head for commercial lender finance at Texas Capital Bank as well as various senior marketing and risk roles at Wells Fargo Lender Finance.
The new hires are as follows:
Neha Banthia – Chief Risk Officer
As CRO, Banthia will lead ELF’s credit risk function, which is responsible for conducting rigorous asset-level collateral analysis in support of new investments as well as post-close surveillance of existing investments. In her capacity as CRO, Banthia will serve as a voting member of ELF’s investment committee. She honed her tradecraft via leadership roles at top specialty finance asset originators, where she adeptly balanced risk and returns by developing and implementing credit and pricing policies, marketing strategies and competitive benchmarking. Most recently, Banthia served as VP, head of lending at Rocket Loans and director, head of personal loans at Avant. Neha will be building out her credit risk and data science team with additional hires over the next several quarters.
Chris Pickett – Principal, Co-Head of Asset Management and Infrastructure
Alongside Carbery, Pickett will co-lead ELF’s asset management function. In addition, Pickett will be responsible for implementing cutting-edge technologies that will streamline pre-closing collateral and transaction analysis and post-closing investment surveillance. Pickett spent the previous 10 years at BlackRock, where he helped develop and deploy a wide range of commercial analytical solutions for third-party clients of Aladdin, the firm’s industry leading enterprise investment and risk management platform.
Edward Chang, who previously served as the firm’s co-CEO with responsibility for the commercial vertical, has transitioned into a senior advisor role.
“We are excited to promote Geoff Beard, Joe Ressa and Jeff Carbery into expanded leadership roles with increased responsibility at an important inflection point in our growth trajectory,” Andrew Salter, chairman of ELF, said. “We are also thrilled to have attracted such high caliber executives as Neha Banthia and Chris Pickett to join our already talented team. Finally, we are grateful to Edward Chang for the significant contributions he has made in helping us scale our platform, and we are pleased that he will continue to work with us in a senior advisor capacity.”
