Growth is the name of the game for this month’s notable hires in digital banking and fintech. On one hand, a major FI like Spanish bank Santander hired a former Google executive to create new products, while smaller fintechs are opening up shop in new markets to drive growth.

Nordea Bank CEO Casper von Koskull may believe that cutting humans from the banking workforce is a good thing, explaining that it will reduce risk, but for many, human talent is at the center of growth. In this month’s Movers and Shakers edition, banks and FIs have added people to top positions to do just that – spur growth.

Here are the most notable hires during late February/early March, according to Bank Innovation editorial:

Banco Santander hires former Google executive for the newly created role of Chief Platform Officer 

Fresh off the heels of its $700 million deal with technology giant IBM, Banco Santander on Monday hired former Google executive Aiaz Kazi for a newly-created role as chief platform officer.

The role is significant for the bank’s five-year digital transformation strategy, as the bank works with IBM to transition to a hybrid multi-cloud hybrid banking environment. Kazi will be responsible for improving the way Santander delivers these new products and services to customers. At Google, Kazi was in charge of Google Cloud’s platform, where he worked on creating new cloud-based services for Google’s in-memory database Sap Hana.

In a statement emailed to Bank Innovation, Kazi said, “I’m eager to apply my experience to build an open financial services platform business delivering on Santander’s bold vision.”

Santander struck a deal with IBM last month to accelerate and deepen its business transformation. The agreement is aimed at enabling Santander to transform into an open, flexible and modern IT environment. The transformation will allow the bank to provide its customers with more innovative digital products and services, but will also help Santander reduce costs, improve customer experience, enhance branch advisers expertise and increase employee productivity.

To implement this hybrid cloud strategy, the bank created its own Cloud Competence Center to work with IBM. Santander is also using IBM DevOps solutions and IBM API Connect to develop, iterate and launch new or upgraded applications and digital services much more rapidly, according to the February announcement.

Splitit Payments picks former PayPal managing director to grow business in Australian & Asia Pacific 

Payments-focused fintechs are enjoying significant growth with players like Adyen reporting a 54% rise in second-half net revenue last year and Klarna reporting its revenue growth by about a third in 2018. Splitit, a monthly installment payments company, is also hoping to grow revenue and its customer base.

The U.K.-based fintech wants to focus its growth efforts on the markets of Australia and Asia Pacific. For the task, Splitit appointed Andrew Pipolo, former managing director at payments company PayPal. In fact, Pipolo was the person behind bringing PayPal into the Australian and Japanese markets in 2004. After that, he went on to serve as managing director for PayPal in Japan in 2009.

At Splitit, Pipolo will be based in Sydney, Australia. He will work alongside the company’s Sydney-based directors Spiro Pappas and Thierry Denis.

Splitit has a market capitalization of AUS$ 279 million.

Finastra Hires Head of Technology to Grow Canadian check, lending, and enhanced services business

In an effort to grow its Canadian business, banking technology provider Finastra has hired Siobhan Byron as its Head of Technology Enabled Managed Services (TEMS), the department that handles the company’s check and lending offerings.

In this position, Byron will oversee planning and execution; sales and marketing; research and development; and product management across four lines of business including Checks, Enhanced Services, Student Lending and Canadian Mortgage Technology, all in the Canadian market. Her team will include 1,300 employees.

Prior to this, Byron was VP and general manager at Westcon-Comstor Canada, a division of technology company Synnex Canada Ltd. She also served as president of Forsythe Technology Canada, now Sirius, where she built the Canadian business and launched the company’s managed services business arm.

Fenegro Appoints Former Citi executive James Follette to implement a growth strategy

Fenergo, a Client Lifecycle Management solutions (CLM) software provider for FIs, appointed James Follette as the Global Head of Commercial and Retail Banking.

The Dublin-based Fenegro, only recently, extended its services to commercial and retail banking customers, providing CLM products for onboarding, account opening,  maintenance and offboarding, across all business lines. Follette will be responsible for growing customers in this line business.

Follette explained his role in last week’s announcement:

Banks in commercial and retail banking are experiencing unprecedented change as challenger banks crowd the market and regulation increases in complexity. The pressure is on to optimise the customer experience and ensure client and product onboarding is frictionless. Customers expect to open an account in minutes not weeks. Fenergo’s out-of-the-box CLM solution is perfectly placed to enable banks to onboard new customers faster, improve customer experience and lead the charge in the fight against financial crime.

Prior to Fenergo, Follette was at Citi where he was responsible for client onboarding and know your customer (KYC) transformation. He also served at IBM, implementing client onboarding initiatives.

In his new role, Follette will report directly into Fenergo’s CEO Marc Murphy.

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