Lending Club names ex-PayPal exec Steve Allocca as president
LENDING Club has hired Steve Allocca (pictured) as its new president.
The US peer-to-peer lending giant, which is slowly rising out of the ashes of last year’s corporate governance scandal, said that Allocca would lead the company’s efforts to expand its borrower base and range of product categories.
He joins Lending Club on 22 May and will report to chief executive Scott Sanborn.
“His unique combination of executive leadership across a wide mix of consumer credit products and an entrepreneurial energy make him an ideal leader as Lending Club returns to growth,” the New York Stock Exchange-listed firm said in an announcement.
Allocca has more than two decades of experience in fintech and financial services leadership. Most recently, he led the credit division and credit products at online payment company PayPal, driving both the consumer and business lending segments globally.
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During his tenure at PayPal, Allocca led expansions into business lending through PayPal Working Capital, which has channelled more than $3bn to over 115,000 businesses around the world since launching in September 2013.
He also launched new mobile-first products and features including easy payments, developed new capabilities in data and risk, and strengthened the control environment.
“The opportunity at Lending Club is massive; no one else has the rich insight derived from 10 years of data from both investors and borrowers combined with the focus, maturity and nimbleness of a tech-led lender, allowing us to help more people get the credit they deserve,” said Allocca.
“In the more than four years I spent at PayPal, we established PayPal Global Credit as a strategic product offering through innovative analysis of both market and company data and by personalizing our approach to borrowers. I am thrilled to join the Lending Club team.”
Prior to joining PayPal, Steve founded and ran Loan Science, a provider of loan portfolio analytics and management for financial services firms.
Lending Club hit the headlines last year when it emerged that the firm had falsified loan records and that its founder and then-head Renaud Laplanche had not disclosed conflicts of interest. Laplanche was ousted from the company last May and has already set up two more online lending businesses.
Earlier this month, the firm posted its fourth consecutive quarterly loss, but raised its revenue forecast for the full year. Sanborn said that banks that had stopped investing through the platform in the wake of the scandal have since returned and that he expects the firm’s turnaround to produce results during this quarter.
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