Guest Article by Jimmy Hanna, CEO of Fairlo
Fairlo is a Certified B Corp fintech on a mission to level the playing field and outsmart the predatory credit market, offering transparent credit across Sweden and the UK – with a proprietary Tech Hub based in Crete, Greece. Fresh off winning Best Employer at the Europe FinTech Awards 2026, and working toward becoming a fully regulated bank, Fairlo CEO Jimmy Hanna answered FinTech Intel’s questions on the culture behind the award, the personal story that shaped Fairlo’s founding, and what’s next for the company.
Being named Best Employer at the European FinTech Awards 2026 is a significant milestone. What does this recognition mean to Fairlo and your team
It is an incredible validation of the workplace we’ve fought to build. From day one, our primary focus has been simple: create a space of trust, balance, and safety where people can actually thrive.
That’s built when you dare to be transparent, even when it’s uncomfortable. You simply cannot build a flexible, transparent financial service for consumers if your internal culture isn’t rooted in the same principle. Staying deeply human in everything we do is our most important attribute. This recognition belongs entirely to our team across Sweden, UK, and Greece, who put their heart, passion, and grit into building Fairlo every single day.
The Best Employer Award recognises organisations that put their people first. In your view, what makes Fairlo such a great place to work?
At Fairlo, we believe that professional growth is a personal journey supported by the collective, driven by creativity, courage, and radical honesty. We operate on a philosophy of “freedom based on business goals,” which empowers our team to take full ownership of their domains. We don’t just assign tasks; we give employees a full mandate to lead projects, acting as an intensive “on-the-job” leadership program.
Every employee is encouraged to stay at the cutting edge, from specialized technical training and regulatory certifications to active participation in industry forums and networks.
Across our international team, we facilitate cross-border mentorship, allowing junior staff to learn directly from a diverse pool of experts.
We prioritize results over “desk time.” We encourage our people to connect with what they’re doing in their daily routine. When you stop treating it as just a job and start seeing it as part of your life, it becomes less stressful, more fun, and more meaningful.
We offer hybrid flexibility and 30 days of vacation so everyone can properly disconnect.
Every successful business starts with a vision. Can you share the story behind Fairlo and some of the biggest challenges you faced in bringing that vision to life?
Fairlo was born out of a real sense of indignation. As Syrian immigrants growing up in Sweden, our family struggled to make ends meet. To support my brother Shamon and me in pursuing our artistic dreams, our mother took an unsecured loan from a major bank to buy equipment. We eventually moved on from those dreams, as kids do, but the loan lingered far longer than we could have imagined.
A year later, we realized that even though she paid her invoices on time every single month, her balance was actually growing. The bank had exploited her lack of financial literacy, tricking her into a never-ending spiral of debt.
Fast forward years later, we started digging and realized that large parts of the credit industry were systematically designed to be sneaky and dishonest, profiting off everything the customer doesn’t understand. That realization sparked ‘The Fair Loan Project,’ which evolved into Fairlo. We wanted to prove it was possible to create a credit service built on mutual trust and respect.
Our strategic starting point was acknowledging a hard truth: all consumer credit is bad, including ours. The challenge was choosing the exact opposite path, showing precisely what everything costs and what we earn on every transaction.
Winning a place in Sting, a leading Sweden-based startup accelerator, early on validated our vision, even when early critics claimed we were ‘telling the customer too much.’ We knew then, as we do now, that radical honesty is the only foundation for a relationship that stands the test of time.
Operating across Stockholm, Crete, and the UK, how has Fairlo’s organisational structure evolved to support growth while maintaining a strong and connected culture?
Scaling internationally requires trust and deep cross-team collaboration. Stockholm, our founding origin, drives our strategy; London manages our UK market expansion under our FCA license; and Crete houses our proprietary Tech Hub.
We bridge these hubs through cross-border knowledge sharing and deep involvement.
We are deeply rooted in the local tech scene, particularly in Crete, where we sponsor and support communities and events, such as Devstaff, Bizrupt, Socrates Crete, Voxxed Days Crete, TEDxUOC and Devfest Heraklion.
We track our internal culture via eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) and, crucially, we gather the whole company once a year for ‘Bonding Days.’ We build deep relationships because no matter how fast tech evolves, real human connection is what holds an international team together.
As one of the few fintechs to achieve B Corp Certification, how does this influence the way Fairlo operates, supports its people and stays true to its values?
Being a Certified B Corp means being part of a progressive movement redefining the responsibility businesses have to contribute to a sustainable and overall better society. We are committed to operating through a holistic impact model across five key areas: Governance, Workers, Community, Environment, and Customers.
It holds us accountable to the truth. For Fairlo, one of the very few consumer lending companies globally to hold this certification, it influences everything from bias-free hiring and our top-tier ‘Workers’ score for employee well-being to actively challenging predatory lending practices and setting a new benchmark for fair credit across Sweden and the UK. We aim to build a sustainable, profitable business.
Building trust is fundamental in financial services. How do your teams work together to deliver the customer experience reflected in Fairlo’s strong customer ratings?
Trust in traditional banks is at an all-time low because they built their foundations a century ago on hidden fees and complicated terms trapping people.
We pioneered the Fairness Receipt, sent on every transaction, detailing our exact unit economics, what costs what, and what Fairlo stands to profit. Everyone gets the same transparent APR with zero hidden fees, giving customers a flexible buffer to manage cash flow without falling into debt traps. When customers see clearly, loyalty follows. That’s why customers who joined us years ago still come back when life asks a new financial question.
When a customer reaches out to Fairlo, they don’t meet a bot or a rigid corporate playbook, they meet a real human with real empathy who can actually care and help. That human-centric approach is why we maintain a 4.7/5 rating on Trustpilot across 4,500+ reviews.
Innovation and growth continue to shape the fintech landscape. What recent updates are you excited to share, and what are the key milestones and priorities ahead for Fairlo?
The biggest milestone we are thrilled to announce is that Fairlo has officially submitted its application for a Banking License. We have always strived for independence and autonomy, and becoming a fully regulated bank is the natural next step in our strategy to challenge the traditional banking paradigm.
Combined with being named a Top 10 Fastest Growing Company in Europe (2024) by the Financial Times, winning both Consumer Credit Provider of the Year and Responsible Lender of the Year at the 2025 Credit & Collections Industry Awards, serving over 100,000 customers, and managing an £82 million portfolio with a 30% profit, we are proving that an “absurdly transparent” bank is not just possible—it’s the model we’re building toward.
Beyond the license itself, we are actively expanding our product suite and rolling out features designed to give customers greater transparency and flexibility over their everyday finances.
Alongside internal product development, strategic partnerships will subtly support our expansion as we scale into new markets.
As technology makes financial services faster and more automated, genuine trust and human-centric relationships will become the ultimate differentiator. We are aiming to build a sustainable bank that our team, partners, and customers can truly be proud of.
AI is transforming the financial services industry. How is Fairlo embracing emerging technologies, and where do you see the biggest opportunities for innovation?
At Fairlo, we believe we are building the bank of the future, and AI is fundamentally changing how we do it.
We use AI across every facet of how we work: engineering, design, credit modeling, marketing, operations, and research. It hasn’t replaced anyone; it has simply made us faster and sharper.
Embracing technology requires a hands-on culture paired with strict guardrails. We actively encourage every team member to experiment with AI tools, from everyday workflows to advanced engineering tools, while keeping human oversight front and center.
Ultimately, AI is missing what actually builds trust: creative intent, empathy, and the productive hesitation that turns a mistake into a breakthrough idea. We use AI to automate the routine so our team has more room to be tangibly human, not less.
Images provided by Fairlo
