FORT WORTH, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Elevate Credit, Inc. (“Elevate”), a leading tech-enabled provider of innovative and responsible online credit solutions for non-prime consumers, today announced the appointment of Brian Biglin as Chief Credit Officer, effective immediately. Elevate also said it has granted inducement stock awards as part of Mr. Biglin’s employment.

Mr. Biglin joins Elevate after almost 25 years of leadership in the areas of risk management and operations, financial product management, financial technology platforms and financial consulting services. He served as Chief Credit Officer at Bill Me Later when it was acquired in 2008 by PayPal, and he continued until 2014 as Chief Credit Officer at PayPal, where he helped grow the portfolio from $400 million to $6 billion and managed credit through the Great Recession. Mr. Biglin subsequently was Chief Risk Officer at loanDepot.com and at Intuit. At loanDepot he built a new consumer lending platform and helped create the first personal loan securitizations for the company; at Intuit he reduced fraud losses, improved customer experience, overhauled operations and increased efficiencies.

Prior to PayPal, he held various risk and business intelligence roles at Hitachi Consulting, Microsoft Corp. and Exterra Credit Recovery. He began his career as a Credit Risk Manager at Household Credit Services. Most recently, Mr. Biglin was CEO of Pacific Credit Group. He received his B.S. in Finance from the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University.

Mr. Biglin now leads Elevate’s industry-leading technology and proprietary risk team, including some of the most advanced thinkers in risk analytics and machine learning for hard-to-underwrite consumers – with more than 35 data scientists, more than 25 of whom have advanced degrees and eight with PhDs. He oversees Elevate Labs, Elevate’s advanced analytics center of excellence headquartered at its state-of-the-art facility in San Diego and spread across four offices in the US and the UK. Elevate invests more than $40 million annually in advanced analytics, data science and the technology that underpins it.

“The need for credit innovation has never been greater, given the state of American and British consumers who can’t access traditional forms of credit, so we are thrilled to have someone with Brian’s deep experience leading our efforts to bring better options to the marketplace,” said Elevate CEO Ken Rees. “We have a strong team that has developed very successful credit models that continue to improve our credit quality at impressive levels. I know they will excel even further under Brian’s great leadership.”

“I’m impressed with Elevate’s leadership in using non-traditional measures of creditworthiness and advanced analytics to look at customers through a different lens as well as the company’s passion to bring product innovation and delivery when and where customers need it most,” Biglin said. “I’m excited to help this great team build on Elevate’s strong record of innovating to deliver responsible products that give access to credit and transparency to customers while meeting rigorous regulatory standards.”

Inducement Award

Elevate granted, on January 25, 2018 (the “Grant Date”), an award of restricted stock units covering 67,204 shares of the Company’s common stock to Mr. Biglin as a material inducement to his hiring as Chief Credit Officer (the “Award”). The Award vests in equal amounts on the first four anniversaries of the Grant Date, subject to Mr. Biglin’s continued employment through the applicable vesting dates.

The Award was granted outside the terms of Elevate’s 2016 Omnibus Incentive Plan and approved by the Company’s Board in reliance on the employment inducement exemption under the NYSE’s Listed Company Manual Rule 303A.08, which requires public announcement of inducement awards. Pursuant to the requirements of that rule, Elevate is including this information in this press release.

About Elevate

Elevate (NYSE: ELVT) has originated $4.9 billion in credit to more than 1.8 million non-prime consumers to date and has saved its customers more than $2 billion versus the cost of payday loans. Its responsible, tech-enabled online credit solutions provide immediate relief to customers today and help them build a brighter financial future. The company is committed to rewarding borrowers’ good financial behavior with features like interest rates that can go down over time, free financial training and free credit monitoring. Elevate’s suite of groundbreaking credit products includes RISE, Elastic and Sunny. For more information, please visit http://www.elevate.com.

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