OakNorth appoints two senior hires as it boosts lending

The profitable small business lender bolters its senior team ahead of its US launch.

OakNorth has made two senior hires as the small business bank continues to boost the licensing of its technology around the world.

The London-based lender has appointed Tiffany Teng as chief of staff, after spending the last five years at US bank JPMorgan Chase, where she launched several products including Chase Pay and redesigned its online platform.

Ths small business bank has also hired Jeremy Payne, formerly of US data and newsgroup Bloomberg, as director of product and data services.

OakNorth, valued at $2.8bn, has lent over $3.7bn since it was founded by entrepreneurs Rishi Khosla (pictured) and Joel Perlman in 2015.

Both new hires will be focused on the platform licensing arm of the business, aiming to sell OakNorth's technology to other banks around the world.

Competition

It competes against fintech rivals such as peer-to-peer lender Funding Circle, Assetz Capital and Growth Street, and it is one of the few fintechs to have made it into the black. Fintech lenders grew in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, after high-street banks cut back on small business lending, fearing defaults.

Teng managed the marketing teams at JPMorgan on product definition, consumer technology and credit card initiatives. 

Prior to working at the US bank, she led the branding, social media, and content production teams for Bloomspot.com, a daily-deal e-commerce start-up she co-founded in 2009, which was acquired by JPMorgan four years later.

Payne has worked for Bloomberg for the last seven years, where he latterly managed planning across a business unit that held more than 100 engineers, over 600 data analysts, and commanded a $50m a year external budget.

In the black

OakNorth said Teng will work “closely” with co-founder Khosla “across a broad array of initiatives”, while Payne will be responsible for best practice in data product development across a range of teams. Both executives will be based at the bank’s London headquarters.

In March, the lender reported a 220 per cent leap in profits in 2018, up from £10.6m in 2017 to £33.9m.

The challenger bank, which employs more than 550 staff, said its total loan facilities also grew by 160 per cent, from £850m in 2017, to £2.2bn in 2018 as the firm rapidly lent out cash to small firms and property developers.

OakNorth became one of the UK’s most-valuable fintechs in February with a price tag of $2.8bn after SoftBank’s Vision Fund led a $440m investment round in the business. The lender said it will use the cash to launch operations in the US.

OakNorth has raised over $1bn from investors, including Clermont Group, Coltrane, EDBI of Singapore, GIC, Indiabulls, NIBC, Toscafund, as well as SoftBank.

UPDATE 28-08-2019 - Amended to reflect that both hires are working on the platform licensing side of OakNorth's business.