Jadev Janardana, CEO of peer-to-peer lending company Zopa.
Zopa
LONDON — UK digital bank Zopa is strengthening its management team with several senior hires to drive growth and prepare the business for an eventual listing.
of SoftbankThe company, which offers credit cards, personal loans and savings accounts, has hired Peter Donlon, former chief technology officer of online card retailer Moonpig, as its chief technology officer, an exclusive told CNBC. Told.
The company also hired Kate Erve, a KPMG CPA with more than 20 years of experience in the financial services sector, as Chief Operating Officer.
Mr. Erb was most recently Executive Director of the Leeds Architectural Institute.
Donlon specifically sees MoonPig go public in 2021, when the company was valued at around £1.2bn. Moonpig is currently trading at £151 per share, with a market capitalization of £518m, reflecting a significant downturn in tech stocks.
His appointment reflects Zopa’s drive to increase maturity and accelerate user growth in anticipation of an eventual initial public offering (IPO). Zopa had planned to go public last year, but those ambitions were frozen as rising interest rates weighed on high-growth tech stocks and sent the stock market on a downward spiral.
CEO Jaideb Janardhana has insisted the bank has no plans for an IPO anytime soon, but suggests a flotation could be imminent by the middle of next year if public market sentiment shifts. bottom.
What needs to change for that, he explained, is the reopening of the public market.
“There have been no great IPOs,” he told CNBC in an interview on the sidelines of London Tech Week this week. “I would really like to see some IPOs succeed.”
“If you look at the types of banks and how they are valued, or if you look at technology companies, neither are highly valued in the public market.”
“The second is… liquidity,” he added. “For a public company to be truly public, it needs to make sure it has sufficient liquidity. Shares should be reasonably easy to buy and sell.”
“I wish the inflation genie was back in the bottle,” he said, adding speculation that fintech IPOs would likely return “by the middle of next year.”
A company spokesperson told CNBC that Zopa will soon reach 1 million customers. Ultimately, he hopes to reach 5 million users in the next few years. The company also competes with big banks and fintech companies like Monzo, Revolut and Starling.
Janardana said the company could accelerate business growth through mergers and acquisitions and consider expanding into financial areas such as small business lending and open banking, where data can be shared between banks and third-party firms. suggested.
Zopa raised £75 million ($95.9 million) from investors earlier this year.
“We are open,” he said. “It is interesting to us if there is an opportunity to leverage open banking, infrastructure and data to deliver a holistic experience for our customers.”
“Lending to SMEs is also of interest to us.”
Zopa achieved monthly profitability in April 2022. Zopa aims to be profitable for the full year by the end of 2023.
When it comes to products Janardhana isn’t interested in rolling out, cryptocurrencies top the list. The finance executive, who has run Zopa since 2014, said cryptocurrencies are “not very good for today’s retail consumer.”
“I am not a big cryptocurrency fan yet, nor am I convinced,” he said. “This is a complex product that people don’t understand, which is why we didn’t offer it.”
