Deko expands team with new Head of Sales appointment

By Joy Dumasia

Deko, the retail finance ecosystem, announced the appointment of Huw Phillips as Head of Sales in a role that will focus on partner onboarding as the company looks to expand its offering to attract new merchants in the SME market.

Huw joins Deko after over 20 years of experience in the retail finance sector at Klarna, Close Brothers and Barclays. At Klarna, Huw was Head of UK Merchant Development, leading the non-fashion merchant development programme ahead of conducting a multi competence team to support merchant partners across a diverse range of sectors and product services.

In his role at Close Brothers before their eventual acquisition from Klarna, Huw created the Relationship Management Team, developed the SME support functions, and nurtured the retail finance arm of the merchant bank from its inception to writing over £300m.

Having surpassed the £3 billion milestones in applications this year and have integrated with over 1,700 merchants, Deko is well-positioned to partner with SMEs looking to provide retail finance at a time when flexible retail payments are becoming increasingly popular. 

The Buy now pay later schemes are expected to account for 10% of e-commerce sales by 2024, with the industry set to be worth £264 billion in the UK by 2024, a 37% increase in 2020. 

Deko CEO Michael Dawson comments: “Huw brings with him a wealth of experience from across the retail industry. Having built the retail finance offering from the ground up at Close Brothers with a core emphasis on customer service, we felt his approach and qualities in securing those lasting partnerships with merchants align perfectly with ours.”

Recently, IBS Intelligence reported that retail finance platform Deko had announced a partnership with Zip, the global Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) pioneer, which has been added to Deko’s multi-lender platform.