Monzo’s new chief financial officer Tom Oldham has bold plans for the UK fintech.
Oldham previously spent four years at Brazilian neobank Nubank, where he oversaw financial planning as the company geared up for a lucrative $52bn IPO. Following an 18-month stint at climate startup Mombak, he joined Monzo — which is said to be readying its own float on the public markets.
Founded in 2015, Monzo is one of the UK’s most well-known neobanks. It’s raised close to $1.9bn in funding and currently has over 10m customers using its trademark hot pink coral cards, the majority of which are UK-based.
Speculation over Monzo’s long-awaited IPO has been rife, with reports in January suggesting CEO TS Anil and board were at loggerheads over whether to float on London or New York stock exchanges.
Asked about a potential listing, the man now controlling Monzo’s purse strings tells Sifted: ”We’ll make a great public company one day but it’s still far too early to talk about the specifics.”
He adds: “Last year, we raised over $600m led by new investors including CapitalG, so we are well capitalised. Right now, I am focused on leading the business through this incredibly exciting period of growth and opportunity.”
Rivals such as Revolut have chosen to pursue rapid geographic expansion and operate in over 35 countries. Aside from a failed bid for a US banking licence in 2021, Monzo has largely opted to stay local.
As the neobank readies its EU offering, Oldham tells Sifted he plans to lean on his previous experience guiding the Brazilian neobank to more than 100m customers to make it a success.
“Our platform can serve 100 million customers as brilliantly as we serve 1 million,” he says. “We’ve proved you can be ambitious and disciplined throughout and that will continue to be the case as we take Monzo into new product verticals and geographies.”
From Brazil to the UK
Oldham replaces James Davies, who left in October to join energy supplier OVO, and joins from carbon removal company Mombak where he held the position of chief investment officer. Prior to that, he led financial planning & analysis at Brazilian neobank Nubank between 2019 and 2023
With more than 100m customers and a profit of close to $2bn for the financial year of 2024, Nubank is one of fintech’s biggest success stories. Oldham was at Nubank when it went public in 2021 — it remains one of the only neobanks worldwide to successfully complete a public listing — and left to join Mombak in 2023 before finding his way to Monzo.
“I joined Nubank when the company was in one country, had several hundred employees and single digit millions of customers,” he says. “When I left Nubank, it was in three different countries, with many thousands of employees and more than 80 million customers.”
Oldham also sees synergies between the Brazilian neobank and Monzo. He tells Sifted that when he relocated to Brazil, he stumbled upon Nubank after looking for a local proposition similar to Monzo.
He says his experience of Nubank’s rise will be “very relevant” to his time at Monzo. Nubank sought to succeed in its homemarket before expanding to other geographies — that’s an approach that Monzo has pursued too. Aside from the UK, the US is the only other geography Monzo its available in (the neobank has operated in the US since 2022 by partnering with Ohio community bank Sutton Bank).
But that’s set to change. The neobank is currently in the process of setting up its presence in Ireland, which will act as a “gateway” to its EU operations. The neobank hired ex-Stripe exec Michael Carney to head up its continental push, according to local Irish media reports.
And while Oldham kept coy on its expansion plans across the EU and elsewhere, he hinted that geographies further afield were also in the pipeline.
“Every part of the world needs a Monzo,” he says.
Valuation growth
Along with balancing Monzo’s books as it pursues global expansion, one of Oldham’s key priorities will be ensuring the neobank’s valuation keeps up with its other neobank counterparts as well as steering the company to an eventual IPO.
Last year, Monzo raised over $600m in funding and introduced new big-name investors to its cap table, such as Google’s CapitalG venture fund. While it bowed out the year with a $5.9bn valuation after launching a secondary share sale, Monzo’s pricetag still lags behind some of its contemporaries.
Revolut was last valued at $48bn, according to a Schroders report last month and Klarna was due to IPO at a reported $15bn valuation before its public listing was tabled last week.
Monzo originally offered customers a basic current account product with a prepaid card, but has since expanded into stocks and shares, “buy now, pay later”, and a pension product. In the last few months, it’s also rolled out home insurance for renters and a bill splitting feature.
Oldham says: “We firmly believe that if we pursue our mission and build amazing products for our customers, investing our resources with rigour and discipline, valuation growth will come as a result.”
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/monzo-cfo-interview/
