The new hires will support the digital bank as it enters its next stage of growth

UK-based digital bank Zopa has appointed Peter Donlon as its new chief technology officer and Kate Erb as chief operating officer.  

They will support the bank as it continues to grow, by driving further efficiencies and automation while making sure it scales sustainably.  

Donlon will oversee Zopa’s engineering team, expand its product and technology infrastructure and push the use of AI and machine learning on its platform.  

Prior to Zopa, Donlon scaled the tech function at Moonpigs from 30 to 200 engineers and led its £1.2b London Stock Exchange listing.  

Meanwhile, Erb will lead business critical functions such as operations, customer service, collections and recoveries.  

Zopa also wants Erb to continue to evolve the digital bank as a great place to work. It claims to have one of the highest employee satisfaction scores across the UK fintech industry.  

Erb is a qualified chartered accountant with KPMG and has more than 20 years of experience in financial services. She joins Zopa from Leeds Building Society.  

On his new role, Donlon said: “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.  

“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 5m 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.”  

These appointments follow last week’s announcement that Pippa Lambert, Deutsche Bank’s former people chief, had joined Zopa’s board. 

Earlier this year, Zopa raised £75m to “cement” its unicorn status. It has had “multiple quarters of strong growth” and “achieved monthly profitability”.  

To date, the digital bank has attracted £3.5b in deposits, more than £2b of loans on balance sheet and issued 400,000 credit cards.  

Zopa was founded in 2005 as a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending company. It launched Zopa Bank in 2020 and shut down the P2P side of the business a year later. 

Image: Zopa  

Josh Poyser
Josh Poyser is an editor at FinTech Intel. He has written about fintech for several years and appeared at FinTech Connect 2023 on the 'Unlocking Success: The Art of Fintech PR' panel.