Progressa announces new Chief Financial Officer

TORONTO, ON and VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - January 05, 2017) - Vancouver-based financial technology lender Progressa announced today that Mary Lynn Tardelli, the Company's Chief Financial Officer is taking medical leave from the business at the end of January 2017. Mary Lynn has been with the Company since early 2016 and is an instrumental member of the Company's senior executive team. She has built out the Company's finance function and has designed many important building blocks to bring the business to where it is today. She has been a part of the business during an immense period of growth and the Company wishes her a quick recovery.

With Mrs. Tardelli's pending leave, the Company has announced the addition of Kiya Hushyar as its new Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Hushyar joins Progressa with over 20 years of accounting, finance and risk management experience, of which 12 years was specialized within the financial services industry. He is a pragmatic, results-oriented professional that has a successful track record of building and leading high performance finance teams, as well as a strong aptitude in business development, operational structuring and talent management.

Prior to taking on this role Kiya was an executive consultant with Coast Capital Savings during their effort to grow into a national credit union, with his main emphases focused on capital, liquidity and regulatory compliance.

Part of Kiya's extensive experience comes from working across the audit and enterprise risk function at Deloitte, where he was on the national credit union council, and led Deloitte's micro-community that was dedicated to working with credit unions. Some of the financial services companies that Kiya has worked with include Coast Capital, First West, VanCity, Marsh and Phillips, Hager & North.

Ali Pourdad, CEO, commented: "I want to personally thank Mary Lynn for her contributions to the business and wish her a speedy recovery. With Kiya joining the Company at this critical juncture, the business, and our many investors, are in great hands, and we continue to be well positioned to execute on our growth agenda."

About Progressa

Progressa is Canada's fastest growing financial technology lender focused on helping non-prime and near-prime Canadians seeking to improve their financial health. In just four years, the Company has helped over 10,000 Canadians 'Borrow for the Right Reasons'. We serve the over three million Canadians who have had their credit rating impacted by overdue bills and items that have gone to collections. By building a loan that fits their budget and using it to pay their overdue bills directly, we help our customers reduce their debt load and establish or rebuild their credit score and offer automatic interest rate reductions over the course of all our loans. With the help of advanced data science and analytics we can effectively and efficiently evaluate credit risk and provide loans where traditional institutions are not willing. For more information, visit www.progressa.com.