Technology

Posted on August 28, 2019 by staff

UK FinTech Unicorn OakNorth makes two heavyweight hires

Technology

Challenger bank OakNorth has added two senior hires to its now 550 strong staff.

With a valuation of $2.8bn, the firm is one of Europe’s most valuable companies, having raised more than $1bn, a record for a European FinTech.

The London-based bank’s first hire is Jeremy Payne, who joins the lender as director of product, data services.

Payne joins the firm from Bloomberg, where he spent the last seven years leading planning across a business unit with over 600 analysts.

During his tenure, Payne pioneered the ‘Scaled Agile planning, execution and accountability system, a model then replicated across the company’s more than 5,000 strong global engineering and product team.

Payne has also worked for global institutions including JP Morgan, S&P Global Market Intelligence, and Blackstone LP.

Tiffany Teng will join the firm as chief of staff. Teng was previously at JPMorgan Chase where she worked on the launch of several products including Chase Pay and the redesigned web platform behind chase.com.

Teng managed product and product marketing teams at JPMorgan Chase, leading product definition and execution on strategic consumer technology and credit card initiatives.

Prior to JPMorgan Chase, Teng led the branding, social media, and content production teams for Bloomspot.com, a daily-deal eCommerce start-up that she co-founded in 2009 which was acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2013.

She currently sits on the board of directors for EARN.org, a San Francisco-based non-profit tackling financial insecurity.

Teng has a Master’s degree in management from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she co-led the inaugural FinTech deal team for Stanford’s GSB Impact Fund which invests in early-stage, for-profit ventures seeking financial, social and environmental returns.

Joel Perlman, co-founder of OakNorth, commented on the new additions to the team.

“At OakNorth, we’ve built a strong product and engineering culture where team members have incredibly high autonomy and ownership, and where every individual believes in our mission of solving the small and medium-sized business lending problem globally,” he said.

“Both Tiffany and Jeremy are accomplished and deeply passionate individuals with experience across start-ups, scale-ups and large established institutions. They both have proven track-records in building and mobilising high-performing teams and products. We’re delighted to be welcoming them to the team.”

The firm said Teng will work closely with co-founder Rishi Khosla as his Chief of Staff across a broad array of initiatives, while Payne will be responsible for ensuring best practice in data product development across multiple teams.

The latest hires are part of a longer recruitment drive for OakNorth. In April, it announced four senior hires based around the UK.

In July it announced it had doubled its headcount after crossing the $1bn funding milestone.