An Interview with George Davis, CEO and Co-Founder at Lorum

Tell us about Lorum

Global payment systems are not broken. Incentives are. For decades, clearing has sat inside institutions whose business models depend on lending and yield. When clearing is subordinated to balance sheet priorities, settlement slows and certainty drops. The same institutions that distort clearing as providers end up disadvantaged as users, forced into fragmented setups, inconsistent rails, duplicated compliance, and unpredictable timelines.

Everyone has been working around this with stablecoins, treasury netting, and payment wrappers, but no one is rebuilding the underlying clearing fabric. Lorum exists to realign those incentives. It is a specialist correspondent institution focused on clearing and cash management for financial institutions. The role is simple. Move funds across markets with certainty and provide named accounts with direct access to local schemes. Lorum rebuilds the institutions at the edge of the network so clearing can move at the speed the underlying rails make possible.

For clients, that means intraday liquidity, less trapped capital, and fewer correspondent relationships to manage. Treasurers gain a single institutional partner for clearing and cash management across markets, rather than stitching together a new setup in every country.

What makes Lorum unique

The core difference is the incentive model. Banks optimise for yield. Clearing optimises for velocity. Those aims conflict. A bank cannot make money by holding funds and also move those funds with certainty and speed. That structural tension is why settlement delays have been a feature of global payments for decades.

Lorum does not run a lending business and does not compete for deposits. Clearing and cash management is the only focus. That means the institution can optimise for velocity, control, and predictability.

Another difference is scope. Institutions expanding across markets normally need new bank relationships in every country. Each relationship creates a different risk profile, a different compliance process, and a different settlement timeline. Lorum replaces that with one correspondent network. Clients issue named local accounts, collect locally, pay out locally, and manage liquidity through a single clearing institution.

How has Lorum evolved

Lorum began as Fuse, the first provider of named virtual accounts and local clearing for AED. The team learned that the problem was not limited to one currency or one region. The real friction sat in the structure of correspondent banking itself. Every new market required new banks, new controls, and new operational risk.

The company then shifted toward a correspondent model. That shift required licensing, direct scheme access, and new internal controls. It also required a stronger institutional identity. Fuse became Lorum to reflect that role. Same team. Same clients. Same infrastructure. A sharpened mandate. Today Lorum processes billions of dollars in volume and acts as the clearing backbone for global financial institutions. 

What can we see from Lorum in the future

Lorum is building global clearing and treasury infrastructure. That work expands in three directions.

First, deeper local access. More licences and more direct connections to local schemes reduce friction and give clients control over timing and liquidity. Clients should be able to issue named accounts in many markets through one institution.

Second, better treasury tools. Treasurers need intraday control, not daily reports. Lorum will release tools that help institutions control liquidity across currencies and regions. Programmatic settlement. Real time reporting. Intelligent routing based on timing and cost.

Third, more corridors. Institutions expanding into new regions should not rebuild their clearing stack each time. Lorum plans to remove that burden so one correspondent relationship can support many markets.

The aim stays constant. Realign incentives in clearing so funds move, not sit.