The Albany Gazette - Velocity Capital Group Appoints Michelle Melo as Director of Financial Operations & Capital Markets

CEDARHURST, NY / ACCESS Newswire / April 17, 2026 / Velocity Capital Group (VCG) today announced the appointment of Michelle Melo as Director of Financial Operations & Capital Markets. Melo joins as VCG accelerates into its next phase of institutional-scale expansion, formalizing the controls and capital infrastructure required for the firm's rapid growth.

VCG has deployed in excess of $1 billion across more than 10,000 transactions to U.S. small businesses, with a 37.1% renewal rate and sub-10% default rate. Velocity's data and technology-enabled platform delivers offers in minutes and funding in hours. The firm operates in all 50 states and is actively preparing to extend its model globally, with origination volumes projected to continue accelerating through 2030.

BACKGROUND & EXPERIENCE

Melo brings deep institutional rigor and capital markets experience. She began her career in public audit, working on engagements with major household-name banks including Wells Fargo and Chase, building a first-principles foundation in financial controls, reporting integrity, and balance-sheet discipline - technical depth that is uncommon at the capital markets level. She carried that foundation into structured finance and ultimately to the C-suite. Most recently, Melo served as Chief Financial Officer at Westwood Funding, where she directed the firm's capital structure strategy in its entirety, cultivating institutional lender relationships, executing warehouse facilities and structured credit transactions, and leading syndicated capital solutions that expanded the organization's financing capacity and deepened its institutional investor base. She also helped raise millions of dollars from professional sports athletes, broadening the firm's investor mix and strategic relationships.

"VCG's tech- and data-powered platform is scaling faster and more efficiently than nearly any peer in our category, and Michelle is here to institutionalize that advantage. She will drive pre-securitization discipline, standardized reporting, and the investor relationships we need to remove scaling friction and enable the next generation of growth. With Michelle on board, VCG is significantly closer to achieving our target of $1 billion in annual originations."

- JAY AVIGDOR, Founder and CEO, Velocity Capital Group

THE ROLE

In her new role, Melo will lead VCG's financial operations and capital markets strategy, standardizing reporting, governance, and institutional investor engagement across the platform to ensure the company's financial architecture matches the pace and quality of its origination engine.

"VCG has built a rare, deeply operational platform with industry-leading performance and proprietary data advantages. Their underwriting leverages thousands of transaction-level attributes and proprietary AI models that deliver 6-8x improvements in underwriting efficiency. My focus is to bring institutional reporting, governance, and investor engagement so this platform can scale reliably, sustainably, and on institutional terms. I'm here for the ride and to help take VCG to the level I know it's destined for."

- MICHELLE MELO, Director of Financial Operations & Capital Markets, VCG

ABOUT VELOCITY CAPITAL GROUP

Velocity Capital Group is a data- and technology-enabled alternative finance platform delivering a growing suite of capital solutions to businesses across all 50 U.S. states. VCG's proprietary underwriting combines up to 2,800 small-business data points per transaction with advanced analytics and proprietary AI to identify performance patterns and predict outcomes with greater precision. Since inception in 2017, the firm has scaled consistently year over year and continues to expand its institutional and product capabilities.

MEDIA CONTACT

Bogdan Klubuk, Chief Marketing Officer
Velocity Capital Group
[email protected] | (516) 585-4566

SOURCE: Velocity Capital Group

View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire

(F.Allen--TAG)