Global financial systems often depend on brittle, legacy processes where the incentives behind clearing are fundamentally misaligned. Seeking to realign these structures is Lorum, a specialist correspondent institution focused on providing predictable clearing, settlement, and treasury infrastructure for the modern financial world.
Lorum provides direct access to local and major payment rails through a single API and ledger, issuing regulated, segregated custody accounts in the end customer’s name. By focusing exclusively on clearing and cash management—rather than lending or competing for deposits—the institution ensures that third-party funds move with certainty on a 100% reserved basis.
George Davis, founder of Lorum, shares his journey from founding a machine learning company at 18 to building the operational backbone for global financial platforms.
Tell us about your career path prior to starting your company
I’ve spent my career across several regulated payments and financial technology businesses, starting with founding a machine learning company in London at 18. Later, I joined TrueLayer as head of product, where I led their payments expansion and saw first-hand how much the global financial system depends on brittle, legacy processes. Most recently, I co-founded BVNK as chief product officer, co-building an institutional payments business on stablecoin rails. That experience highlighted where existing clearing and settlement frameworks were holding the industry back, which ultimately led to the creation of Lorum.
Tell us more about your company and its offering
Lorum is a specialist correspondent institution focused on clearing, settlement, and treasury infrastructure. We provide direct access to major payment rails through a single API and ledger, issuing regulated custody accounts in the end customer’s name. Importantly, we do not lend or take balance sheet risk; our sole purpose is to help financial institutions move third-party funds in a controlled way. Clients use us to collect and pay out locally, hold balances, and manage multi-currency liquidity without needing to maintain fragmented bank relationships.
What problem was your company set up to solve?
The problem isn’t that global payments are “broken,” but that clearing incentives are misaligned. Clearing typically sits inside lending banks that profit from holding funds to earn yield, which creates slow settlement and trapped liquidity. While many blame SWIFT for delays, the lag actually lives in the chain of custody and the balance sheet incentives of these banks. Lorum realigns these incentives by holding client funds on a 100% reserved basis, allowing money to move with certainty and fewer intermediaries.
Since launch, how has your company evolved?
We originally launched as Fuse, focused on specific clearing use cases in the Middle East. We rebranded to Lorum—from the correspondent banking term Loro, meaning funds held for a third party—to reflect our evolution into a new type of institution built entirely around our clients’ money. We’ve since expanded our regulatory footprint and scaled into a clearing backbone for major global platforms. We have also extended our infrastructure to support stablecoins and tokenised money market funds for multi-asset treasury.
What has been the biggest challenge or most tricky moment to overcome?
The hardest part has been shifting how the market understands the problem. Many are conditioned to blame technical rails or messaging layers like SWIFT, or to view blockchain as the only solution. Getting treasury and compliance teams to see that the issue is structural—based on balance sheet incentives rather than just technical speed—takes significant patience.
What are your biggest achievements or proudest moments so far?
Becoming a part of the operational backbone for clients like dLocal, Remotepass, TerraPay, and OpenFX is a major highlight. Scaling to 45x volume growth in 2025 while maintaining strict regulatory rigour and safeguarding standards is the achievement we are most proud of.
How would you describe the culture of your company?
The culture at Lorum is direct, transparent, and obsessive. We treat everyone as an owner because they all have skin in the game. We specifically hire people who are deeply obsessive about a subject—not necessarily payments—because that intensity is vital to solving the structural problems we face. Many of us have lived with the consequences of settlement uncertainty first-hand, which keeps us aligned on why this work matters.
What’s in store for the future?
We are building toward comprehensive treasury and trade services, extending beyond clearing into cash management, FX optimisation, and multi-asset liquidity. A major focus is tokenised money market funds, allowing institutions to earn interest on liquidity pools around the clock without sacrificing control
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