Monzo CEO and founder Tom Blomfield to step down

Tom Blomfield will step aside from day to day executive leadership of digital challenger bank Monzo, becoming its president. 

The digital bank's newly minted US CEO TS Anil will take over from Blomfield running day to day operations, Techcrunchfirst reported. 

Anil joined Monzo from Visa at the end of 2019, where he was latterly Global Head of Products and Platforms at the US financial services company.

Anil has over 25 years’ experience in payments, credit cards and banking, working globally across EMEA, APAC and Americas.

The news comes just days after the departure of Monzo's chief credit officer, Tim Trailor, who joined the business from Klarna in August 2018 and moved on to alternative lender Capital On Tap. Also, at the same time that Monzo is reportedly heading for a new fundraising round aimed at shoring up finances, albeit at a 40 per cent lower valuation than at its last round in 2019.

Blomfield was a founder of payments fintech GoCardless, before joining Starling Bank in its early days. He co-founded Monzo in 2015.

Ahead of Monzo (then called Mondo's) first crowdfunding round four years ago back in February 2016, Blomfield explained his vision in an article published by AltFi. 

“We’ve been called a bank for people who hate banks. We’re using the power of the smartphone to put our customers back in control of their finances. You can see exactly what you’re spending in seconds, from anywhere in the world. Sending money to friends or splitting bills is as easy as a single tap,” he said.

The round went on to score £1m in 96 seconds from investors. 

Since then Monzo has broadly moved from strength to strength. It now has more than four million customers and saw a record quarter for current account switching, becoming the most-switched to account for the first time, during Q4 2019.