There were a handful of prominent staffing shuffles in August within the banking and fintech space, as the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic begins to settle in the U.S. Payments companies Stripe and PayPal have tapped executives from incumbents while fintechs specializing in underwriting bolstered their executive teams.
Here are the most notable hires for late July and August:
PayPal snags Wells Fargo innovation exec
Peggy Mangot has joined PayPal’s ranks as the operating partner of PayPal Ventures in July, according to a CNBC report.
Prior to PayPal, Mangot was senior vice president of innovation at the $1.97 trillion Wells Fargo, where she headed up projects such as its identity-management platform and the personal finance app Greenhouse, which stalled in a pilot mode nearly two years after launching.
PayPal’s VC arm focuses on early round investments in fintech startups and includes fintechs Acorns, Ellevest and LendUp in its portfolio.
Stripe taps General Motors CFO
Dhivya Suryadevara left her post at CFO at General Motors Co., for a CFO position at online payments firm Stripe, according to a Stripe release. San Francisco-based Stripe, which has raised $1 billion over 11 rounds, allows businesses to accept online payments in more than 120 countries, and includes Uber Technologies and Amazon.com among its customers.
Suryadevara will focus on expanding Stripe’s global operations following a 15-country expansion in the past year across Latin America, Asia Pacific and Europe. The new CFO appointment comes on the heels of other recent Stripe hires, including Mike Clayville, formerly of Amazon Web Services, as chief revenue officer and Trish Walsh, formerly of Voya Financial, as general counsel.
American Bank recruits former OCC examiner
Dallas-based American Bank, with more than $110 million in assets, has named Zane Smith executive vice president of credit and risk management, according to a company announcement. Prior to his post at American Bank, he served as vice president at Veritex Community Bank, where he supported the chief risk officer in assessing potential risk for the bank’s $6 billion loan portfolio.
Before that, Smith held the role of examiner in charge of mid-sized and large banks at the Office of the Comptroller of Currency, where he served for eight years with a focus on commercial credit target examinations and information technology insight.
OakNorth names new COO
OakNorth appointed Peter Grant as its chief operating officer in August to drive revenue and growth, according to a company release. In his new role, Grant steps in for Jackson Hull, who was hired August 2019 as the company’s chief technology and chief operating officer. Hull remains OakNorth’s CTO, according to LinkedIn.
OakNorth, which operates as a bank in the U.K., white labels its underwriting technology to other lenders, recently signing on PNC Bank, Customers Bank and Modern Bank.
Nova Credit appoints payments exec as new head of product
Nova Credit, a San Francisco-based startup whose technology helps banks underwrite loans for immigrants, signed on Melanie Aliperti as head of product, according to a company release. Aliperti comes to Nova Credit from point-of-sale financing fintech Affirm, where she served as senior director of consumer product, and Venmo, where she led the person-to-person product team responsible for the core app experience, money movement as well as fraud and risk management.
Aliperti joins after the company raised a $50 million Series B in February, with the intention to use that money to expand its auto finance and mortgage offerings.






