Financer vs. financier

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Grammarist

A financer is someone who provides money for a particular undertaking. A financier is a person or organization whose business is providing, investing, or lending money. In other words, a financier makes a habit of financing, while a financer might do it only once or occasionally.

Some dictionaries don’t list financer—and your spell check might disapprove of it—but this is a mistake. As long as finance is a verb, and as long as some people who finance things aren’t financiers, there will always be financers.

Examples

He was a gunrunner and a financer of such poaching attempts. [The Times of India]

Billionaire financier George Soros is warning the United States risks something similar to the eurozone debt crisis. [AP (article now offline)]

Mobley … is the sole financer of the proposed Summit Medical Compassion Center. [Providence Journal]

The announcement comes a day after the World Bank (WB), the main financier of the Nairobi Urban Toll Road Project, announced it was pulling out. [The Standard]