Nick Elkan — Founder & CEO

Nick Elkan has spent over 25 years building, scaling, and leading businesses in some of the most demanding corners of UK financial services. He founded Orbyt Studio to bring that operational experience to a new generation of businesses navigating AI adoption, commercial transformation, and growth at pace.

Before founding Orbyt Studio, Nick served as Head of Motor Finance at RateSetter, where he built the division from nothing into the world's largest peer-to-peer motor finance operation. Starting with zero infrastructure, zero partners, and zero revenue, he designed the entire operational architecture of the business — credit policy, compliance frameworks, underwriting processes, and a national partner network spanning more than 300 locations across the UK. Within three years, the division had generated over £1 billion in loan applications and reached £160 million in funded lending volume, with annualised underwritten volume exceeding £300 million at peak.

That experience — building something from scratch, at speed, inside a regulated environment, with full P&L accountability — is what shapes how Nick works with clients today.

His career spans senior roles at HBOS, Metro Bank, and Apple UK, as well as founding two further businesses after RateSetter: Discover Finance, a specialist finance brokerage, and NickelTech, a sustainable consumer products company that he took from concept to commercial launch across five European markets. He is Mensa-qualified and holds a UK Motorsport Race Licence.

Nick's work at Orbyt Studio sits at the intersection of AI implementation, commercial strategy, and operational transformation. He advises founders and executive teams on how to deploy automation intelligently — not as a replacement for experienced people, but as a tool that makes them significantly more effective. His published writing on AI in financial services draws on direct operational experience rather than theory, and he has been featured in Autocar, Motor Finance Online, BusinessMoney.com, and Asset Finance International.