Global Courant
Jaidev Janardana, CEO of peer-to-peer lender Zopa.
Zopa
LONDON — British digital bank Zopa is strengthening its management team with a number of senior staff as it looks to drive growth and prepare its business for an eventual IPO.
The SoftbankThe bank-backed company, which offers credit cards, personal loans and savings accounts, told CNBC exclusively that it has hired Peter Donlon, the former chief technology officer of online card retailer Moonpig, as CTO.
The company has also recruited Kate Erb, a qualified chartered accountant from KPMG with more than 20 years of financial services experience, as chief operating officer.
Erb was most recently director of operations at Leeds Building Society.
Donlon saw Moonpig in particular through its 2021 public listing, which valued the company at around £1.2 billion at the time. Moonpig now trades at a price of £151 per share, giving it a market cap of £518 million, reflecting a broad slump in tech stocks.
His appointment reflects a push from Zopa to mature and accelerate user growth ahead of an eventual initial public offering (IPO). Zopa planned to go public last year, but it put that ambition on hold when the stock market took a turn for the worse with rising interest rates beating fast-growing technology stocks.
CEO Jaidev Janardana insisted the bank has no plans for an IPO anytime soon, but suggested an IPO could be on the horizon in the middle of next year if sentiment in public markets changed. What needs to change for that, he explained, is for public markets to reopen.
“We haven’t had great IPOs,” he told CNBC this week in an interview on the sidelines of London Tech Week. “I’d like to see some successful IPOs actually happen.”
“If you look at the type of banks, and how they’re valued, or technology companies, both, the public market valuations aren’t great.”
“The second point is … liquidity.” he added. “We need to make sure there’s enough liquidity to really take a publicly traded company public. Shares need to be fairly easy to buy and sell.”
Zopa will soon reach 1 million customers, a company spokesperson told CNBC. It eventually wants to reach 5 million users in the coming years. The company competes with large banks and fintechs such as Monzo, Revolut and Starling.
Janardana suggested that the company could try to accelerate the growth of its business through mergers and acquisitions, and a shift into other areas of finance, including small business lending and open banking, which allows data to be shared between banks and outside companies.
Zopa raised £75 million ($95.9 million) from investors earlier this year.
“We’re open,” he said. “Where there’s an opportunity for us to use open banking, infrastructure and data to deliver holistic experiences to customers is something that’s been of interest to us.”
“SME loans (SMEs) are also areas of interest to us.”
Zopa reached monthly profitability in April 2022. Zopa aims to be profitable for the full year by the end of 2024.
As for the products Janardana does not want to roll out, crypto is at the top of the list. The finance director, who has led Zopa since 2014, said crypto “isn’t great for the retail consumer today.”
“I’m not a big fan of crypto yet, I’m not convinced yet,” he said. “It’s a complicated product that people don’t understand, which is why we never offered it.”
