Lending Club, the online marketplace connecting borrowers and investors, has made two new additions to its investor group.
Valerie Kay will join Lending Club as senior vice president, head of institutional investors and Raman Suri will join as senior vice president, head of retail investors.
Both will report to Patrick Dunne, chief capital officer, who joined Lending Club in July after a 25-year career at BlackRock and other investment firms.
"A key strength of Lending Club's marketplace lies in the diversity of our capital, including the largest retail investor base of any marketplace lender and a broad institutional investor base spanning banks, dedicated funds, asset managers and pension funds. Valerie and Raman will play important roles in helping our marketplace achieve its full potential in terms of scale and resiliency," says Scott Sanborn, CEO and president of Lending Club.
Kay, a former executive at Morgan Stanley and Prudential Securities, brings more than 25 years of capital markets experience across a broad range of consumer asset classes. She will be responsible for institutional capital management on Lending Club's platform.
"Lending Club's marketplace has transformed access to consumer credit, delivering a high-quality asset with solid returns to investors, and I'm thrilled for this opportunity to join a talented team and further build the institutional investor strategy," Kay says.
Kay spent 20 years at Morgan Stanley, including 12 years as a managing director, where she held several leadership roles within global capital markets including deputy head of asset finance, head of structured asset monetization and head of mortgage finance. She was most recently part of the institutional securities group where she was responsible for managing relationships with some of Morgan Stanley's most important institutional investors.
Suri has held a variety of senior roles at BlackRock iShares and its predecessor, Barclays Global Investors (BGI), including head of RIA and institutional segments and head of product for US iShares. He brings more than 15 years of experience in investment management, product and business development to Lending Club. Suri will be responsible for driving the company's retail investor channel, focusing on self-directed retail, registered investment advisors, brokerage distribution strategies, and product development.
"Like iShares, Lending Club has created a platform that's levelling the playing field for retail investors, enabling them to access attractive, low-cost, high-performing financial products," says Suri. "I'm looking forward to working with the team to expand Lending Club's ability to help more retail investors achieve the returns that the marketplace delivers."
At BlackRock, Suri was responsible for expanding the iShares product line to over 200 products across asset classes leading to a democratising of investment choices for retail investors. At Barclays, Suri developed a sales channel that became one of the biggest ETF users with over 100 different firms and over USD75 billion in assets. He most recently served as managing director, head of insurance ETFs at BlackRock, overseeing the entry of iShares into the USD5 trillion insurance market.
