Fintech’s biggest hires and departures in 2022

Here is an overview of some of the year’s biggest entries and exits.

Image source: Lisa Jacobs, Koen Köppen, Alan Chang, Charles Delingpole (L-R, clockwise).

2022 was characterized by mass redundancies in fintech in the second half of the year.

Huge companies including Stripe, Plaid, Pleo and Klarna (twice) have all made cuts this year, and there were mass layoffs at Meta and Twitter in the tech space as well.

There were also a number of big exits – some to exciting new ventures and others, well, still to be determined.

However, the first half saw a number of top players make the leap from traditional finance to crypto and digital banking – including HSBC’s former head of risk management – ​​and a number of big industry hires as well.

Here are some of the industry’s biggest hires and departures in 2022:

Appointments

Elon Musk – Twitter

Not officially a fintech appointee, Elon Musk gets an honorable mention on this list with his Twitter takeover earlier this year. He has hardly had a smooth ride as CEO, and a Twitter poll asking if he should quit decided he should (with 57.7 percent of more than 17 million votes). So Musk can quickly move to the exit page of this article, but for now he remains head of Twitter – until he can “find someone stupid enough to take the job”. Whether it’s seeing Atom Bank leave the platform or the confusing idea of ​​turning Twitter into a bank, Musk has already had a big impact on the fintech space whether he meant it or not.

Sid Jajodia – Revolut

Revolut suffered the loss of a few big names from its leadership this year – read on for more on that – but also saw a few big promotions. Sid Jajoodia, the fintech chief, took on the new role of US CEO in June, leading the rollout of the company’s international banking capabilities. Jajodia was the third in a string of top-level hires for the American team, following Yuval Rechter as general manager and Danil Ovechkin as head of growth.

Marc Moses – Orenda

In January, an embedded finance fintech startup appointed a former HSBC as its new strategic advisor. Marc Moses, formerly the high street bank’s group chief risk officer, has joined Orenda, as exclusively revealed by AltFi, and also invested in its seed round. Moses marked a trend of big names making the transition from the incumbent banking sector to the alternative finance space.

Lisa Jacobs – Funding Circle

Funding Circle started the year on 1 January with a changing of the guard. CEO Lisa Jacobs stepped up to the role of CEO, taking over the reins from company co-founder Samir Desai, who had held the role for 12 years. Desai moved into a non-executive director role and Jacobs has had a good year. Not only did she take over from a CEO-founder, but also during a pandemic, and the success Founding Circle had this year under her leadership saw her named AltFiCEO of the Year for 2022.

Wander Rutgers–Lightyear

Wander Rutgers, the former head of Robinhood UK, joined Lightyear as chief operating officer this year. Rutgers was one of the equity trading fintech’s first angel investors and became an official advisor in January before taking on the role in May. Prior to joining Lightyear co-founders and fellow Wise alumni Martin Sokk and Mihkel Aamer, Rutgers led Robinhood’s UK team, was product manager at Plum and held various roles across operations and product at Wise.

Koen Köppen – Mollie

Mollie captured one of Europe’s most prominent technology managers this year when Koen Köppen joined from Klarna. Köppen spent more than a decade at the buy-now-pay-later giant before moving to the Dutch fintech in June. He became CTO back in 2017 and oversaw five years of incredible growth that saw it become Europe’s most valuable fintech for a time. Mollie will certainly be hoping to see the same levels of growth with Köppen on board.

Henk Van Hulle – Open Banking Implementation Entity

The Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) got its first chief executive this year as part of OBIE chair and trustee Charlotte Croswell’s aim to improve the governance and reputation of the organisation. Henk Van Hulle took on the role in February after many years at the post office alongside former Innovate Finance CEO Crosswell after former trustee Imran Gulamhuseinwala resigned last year following findings that he allowed “a culture of bullying and intimidation” at the organisation. Under his leadership, the chairman and trustee also had all administrative functions, but now the roles are clearly differentiated.

Departures

Charles Delingpole – ComplyAdvantage

ComplyAdvantage’s founder Charles Delingpole stepped down as the company’s CEO in October, transitioning to the role of executive chairman. Fintech CEO Vatsa Narasimha took over as CEO, giving serial entrepreneur Delingpole a chance to step back and focus on the company’s strategic vision. The decision came at the end of an incredible year for Delingpole, which saw him awarded AltFiits 2022 Special Industry Contribution Award because of “the contribution this founder and his company have made to improving the health of the wider financial industry, which became more acutely important this year following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent economic sanctions”.

David Arden – Metro Bank

Chief financial officer David Arden quit his job at Metro Bank back in February, just days before it was due to announce its interim financial results. He left in April, with assistant chief financial officer Marc Jenkins filling the role over the summer while the bank searched for a replacement. Jenkins has since joined Bank of London as finance director, while James Hopkinson took over the role full-time in September after almost three years as finance director and chief executive of ClearBank. It has been a tough 12 months for the bank, which was hit with financial misconduct fines in December 2021 and again in December 2022 for misleading investors.

Alan Chang – Revolut

Revolut lost a few big names this year, but most notably one of its earliest employees and biggest cheerleaders, chief revenue officer Alan Chang left after seven years. Revolut number five and seen as CEO Nikolay Storonsky’s right-hand man, Chang left to start Tesseract Energy — which raised $78 million in September — with fellow Revolut alum Charles Orr. He told AltFi he wouldn’t have left Revolut “for any other job in the world” and hopes to revolutionize energy the way Revolut revolutionized payments. Revolut also lost Deirdre Halligan this year – the only woman on the management team – who is now COO of the Algorand Foundation.

Laurence Krieger – Tide

Tide’s UK managing director Laurence Krieger has left the company after five years at the SME banking provider. Krieger stepped down in February, saying at the time that he would “continue to be fully engaged in the fintech space” and that he “would not go far”. Since then, he’s gone on to mentor at the Creative Destruction Lab, become a board advisor for Enfuce, a senior external advisor for Bain and is the interim CEO of a digital bank currently in stealth mode, according to his LinkedIn.

Sam Bankman-Fried – FTX

And last, but by no means least, we have the infamous Sam Bankman-Fried. It only felt fitting to end this list on a note that out there like the first — Bankman-Fried’s advisers even offered Musk up to $15 billion to invest in Twitter at one point. It’s hard to summarize the story of the disgraced FTX co-founder and CEO in a single paragraph, but the former billionaire resigned after filing for bankruptcy when his company’s original cryptocurrency FTT collapsed. Formerly the 41st richest man in America, Bankman-Fried is currently out on bond after being arrested – arguably the most dramatic and sudden departure from fintech.