Jelle van Schaick, VP Marketing, Lorum

Today we're delighted to speak with Jelle, VP Marketing at Lorum, a specialist correspondent providing global clearing and cash management for financial institutions. With 55x growth in 2025 and month-on-month growth exceeding 200% for their USD clearing product, Lorum is addressing the structural incentive problems in correspondent banking by separating clearing from lending entirely.

Questions are in bold, over to you Jelle:

Tell us about yourself and your background.

I started out as an account manager for an IT service provider, working with some of the biggest traditional financial institutions in the Netherlands. Sitting close to those organisations, seeing how their systems actually operated, was what drew me into fintech. There was a clear gap between what those institutions could deliver and what the market was starting to expect, and I wanted to be on the side trying to close it. Since then I've spent about eight years at high-growth B2B fintech companies, trying to make complex payment products land clearly with the market.

What does your day-to-day look like as VP of Marketing at Lorum?

A mix of narrative and mechanics. One part of my week is positioning work: shaping how we talk about clearing, custody, and the structural issues with correspondent banking. The other part is purely operational: demand generation, content, automations, sales alignment, and making sure the pipeline reflects our actual ICP - moving between strategy and execution constantly.

What does Lorum do, and what makes it different?

Lorum is a specialist correspondent providing global clearing and cash management for financial institutions. We give fintechs, PSPs, and marketplaces access to global and local rails and full custody account management through a single API.

The structural difference is that we have no lending book. Banks optimise deposits for yield, which creates natural friction in international flows. We are built exclusively for clearing and cash management, which means faster settlement, better economics, and no conflict of interest between what the client needs and what the bank's balance sheet needs.

Can you tell us about Lorum's funding and growth?

We have raised venture capital from investors including Northzone, Flourish, Illuminate Financial, and Shorooq Partners, and in 2025 we have grown 55x. Our USD clearing product has been growing at over 200% month on month, which tells you something about the structural demand for what we are building.

Why did Lorum exist? What problem does it actually solve?

The correspondent banking model has a structural incentive problem. When a payment stalls, the bottleneck usually is not SWIFT. It is the chain of intermediaries, each adding a balance sheet to fund, a compliance layer to pass, and a fee to extract. The banks running these chains earn more by holding onto funds than by moving them quickly.

Our founders George Davis and James Smith saw that clearing needed to be separated from lending entirely. Instead of managing a dozen bilateral bank relationships, our clients get one global clearing partner with local rails, consolidated treasury visibility, and economics that are not subsidising someone else's lending book.

Who are your target customers, and how does Lorum make money?

Our clients are financial institutions, PSPs, marketplaces, EOR platforms, and trading and investment platforms. Revenue is primarily transaction-based, across international settlement flows and FX conversion, with additional revenue from treasury services and multi-currency account management.

If you could change one thing about the payments industry, what would it be?

The incentive structure. Traditional financial institutions are rewarded for holding funds, not for moving them. If clearing providers were measured purely on settlement speed and reliability, the economics would immediately align with what clients actually need. The technology to move money faster largely exists. The incentives to do so often do not.

What would you say to the CEOs of major banks?

Clearing is being unbundled from banking, and that is not something to resist. Banks run a lending business model, and that is perfectly valid. But it creates inherent friction in settlement flows. Specialists are filling that gap, purpose-built for clearing and nothing else.

What industry publications and resources do you follow?

Finextra is my daily read for payments and banking infrastructure. The Wall Street Journal and The Banker for broader financial context. Between those three you get a pretty complete picture of what's going on in the industry.

Who are two LinkedIn influencers you would recommend following?

Simon Taylor and Matt Brown, he writes some of the clearest thinking on fintech, payments, and vertical software out there. He has a knack for breaking down complex infrastructure topics into something genuinely readable in less than 1000 words.

What is your favourite app or website, and why?

Revolut and Robinhood, for different reasons. Revolut because it genuinely changed how I think about day-to-day money management. Robinhood for democratising access to financial markets in a way that the incumbent brokers never bothered to attempt. Both are great reminders that the best products do not just digitise existing experiences, they make you wonder why it was ever done any other way.

What is your favourite startup or business, and why?

I am obviously biased, but it has to be Lorum. We are solving a problem that has frustrated the industry for decades, and we are doing it in a way that no one else has. Building a specialist correspondent with no lending book, direct rail access across 30+ markets, and a custody model that actually aligns our incentives with our clients. The fact that we have grown 55x in 2025 tells me the market agrees. It is rare to work somewhere where the product, the timing, and the team all line up.

What trends do you think will shape fintech over the next few years?

Three things keeping me up at night. First, the unbundling of clearing from banking is reaching a tipping point. The current correspondent model was never built for the volumes and complexity that modern platforms demand. Second, stablecoins are moving from crypto curiosity to serious settlement infrastructure. And third, this is the one I find most fascinating, agentic commerce. We are very soon moving towards a world where AI agents transact autonomously on behalf of businesses and consumers.

Thank you to Jelle for sharing his insights with us. To learn more about Lorum and their approach to global clearing and cash management, visit their website.