OakNorth appoints Barclays veteran and former MD of BGC Partners as COO

By Bridging Loan Directory 17th July 2018

OakNorth – the bank for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs – has appointed Amir Nooriala, former MD of BGC Partners, as its Chief Operating Officer (COO).

After graduating with a degree in Computer Science from the University of Nottingham, Amir spent four years working in California for Cisco Systems as a system engineer, before returning to the UK to work for Accenture in its Global Technology Consulting division. In 2006, he joined Barclays Investment Bank, leaving a decade later as a Director running its Regulatory Technology divisions. Whilst there, he architected a programme whereby the operations and technology teams were combined into a single holistic service, enabling them to streamline and automate much faster than had previously been thought possible. In 2016, he moved to BGC Partners where for the last two years, he has been responsible for both their change function and their RegTech responsibilities, leading a team of 40 and overseeing a change budget of $50m.

As the bank’s PRA-approved SMF24, Amir will be responsible for managing the day-to-day internal operations and technology of the bank, including all IT systems and operational processes. He will lead the bank’s change programmes and change agenda, driving project prioritisation and delivery to ensure superior fulfilment of the bank’s highest impact and business critical projects.

Rishi Khosla, CEO and co-founder of OakNorth, said:

“It has been another good quarter for OakNorth – our loan book is now £1.6bn and we have a further £1bn of loans in docs and being transacted. In addition to this, we continue to attract tens of millions of pounds in deposits each month from thousands of savers, and we’ll be launching easy-access and notice accounts for businesses later this year. Amir will play a central role in ensuring we continue developing our operational and technological resilience in line with our expanding activity.”

Amir Nooriala, Chief Operating Officer at OakNorth, said:

“OakNorth has continuously been recognised as one of the fastest-growing and most successful fintech businesses in Europe, and the IP it has built around origination and credit has enabled it to become one of the UK’s most active lenders. I’m incredibly excited to be joining the organisation as it continues to grow its loan book and expand its footprint across the UK, and I look forward to working with the team to launch several new retail products later this year.”