“I wish I had known that sometimes your biggest career opportunity may be disguised as a crisis. After repatriating to the US in 2009, after nine years abroad, I thought my run in finance was over. It was just the beginning.”
Bina N. Shetty brings a formidable, three-decade track record of market innovation, platform building and transaction execution to specialty finance. She began her career at Merrill Lynch, executing IPOs and M&A transactions for financial institutions before joining CIBC World Markets in Toronto. There, her team captured the No. 1 market share in Canadian closed-end fund issuances, raising more than C$20 billion across 300 transactions.
A pivotal turning point occurred when she returned to the U.S. in 2009 amid the global financial crisis. Rather than halting her trajectory, frozen traditional markets propelled her into non-bank lending, leading her to build a boutique specialty finance advisory practice that she led for nine years. Today, as chief commercial officer at Percent, Shetty oversees originations for a digital private credit marketplace with more than $2 billion in primary issuance.
What sets Shetty apart is her rare structural perspective — spanning private credit, public equity, M&A and cross-border transactions— and her proven ability to build origination practices from scratch across three distinct platforms. At Percent, she leads the onboarding of 20 to 30 complex lender finance facilities annually, driving private credit’s shift toward standardized, data-driven deal execution. Her work connects essential capital directly to consumer and small business credit providers underserved by traditional financial institutions.
Grounded in transparency, direct communication and unyielding momentum, Shetty relies on an authentic, candid approach that earns lasting respect from entry-level team members to senior executives. Looking ahead, she champions artificial intelligence and digital tools as powerful equalizers in private credit, encouraging rising women to leverage emerging technologies, build strong technical foundations and confidently shape the future of financial leadership.
