Lending Club hires PayPal exec as president

Lending Club has hired a PayPal Holdings executive as its president, part of a shuffling of the company’s management ranks after the departure of the company’s founder and CEO.

Steve Allocca will join Lending Club on May 22, the San Francisco-based online lender said Tuesday in a press release. He will lead its efforts to deliver credit across an expanding range of product categories, according to the company.

Lending Club is seeking to resume loan growth after a scandal that led to the departure of CEO Renaud Laplanche last May. The company has originated around $2 billion of loans in each of the last four quarters, down from $2.75 billion in the first quarter of 2016.

Lending Club, which operates an online platform where borrowers are matched with loan buyers, offers personal installment loans, small-business loans, refinancing of auto loans and consumer loans for medical treatment.

Allocca most recently led San Jose, Calif.-based PayPal’s credit division, which offers consumer and small-business loans. Earlier he served as head of personal credit at Wells Fargo.

He indicated that he plans to explore new ways to monetize the data that Lending Club collects from borrowers and investors.

“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,” Allocca said in the press release.

Scott Sanborn has been serving as Lending Club’s president and CEO since June 2016. Chief Financial Officer Tom Casey and Chief Capital Officer Patrick Dunne have both joined the company during Sanborn’s 11-month tenure in the top job.