Digital bank Zopa has appointed Peter Donlon and Kate Erb as CTO and COO respectively, pending regulatory approval.
Donlon and Erb add significant technology and operations experience to Zopa’s leadership roster as the company plots a pathway to IPO.
Donlon will oversee Zopa’s 220-strong engineering team, expanding its products and technology infrastructure while ensuring its platform adopts AI and machine learning.
Prior to Zopa, Donlon scaled Moonpig PLC’s tech function from 30 to 200 engineers and led its £1.2bn London Stock Exchange listing. Previously, he served as head of IT development for the UK’s second-largest supermarket Sainsbury’s, overseeing its technology capabilities across 1,400 shops and 190,000 employees.
Erb will lead business critical functions like operations, customer service, collections and recoveries. A qualified chartered accountant with KPMG and over 20 years of experience in financial services, she joins Zopa from Leeds Building Society.
“One of the things that attracted me to Zopa is its ability to deliver great outcomes through cutting-edge technology, markedly improving the financial well-being and resilience of its customers,” said Donlon.
“I am proud to be joining Zopa’s purpose driven team and look forward to scaling its digitally native offering, reaching even more customers as it continues to grow profitably.”
Erb added: “I am excited to be joining Zopa’s leadership team as it prepares to serve 5 million customers in the coming years. I look forward to continuing the delivery of its brilliant customer experience through fair, intuitive, and transparent products that have established Zopa as the UK’s most customer centric bank with one of the highest NPS scores”.
The news comes as Zopa reaches an inflection point in its journey as a fully regulated bank, following multiple quarters of strong growth and achieving monthly profitability.
To date Zopa has attracted £3.5 billion in deposits, more than £2 billion of loans on balance sheet, and issued over 400,000 credit cards.