Monzo Chair Departs Following Last Year’s Shareholder Backlash

Monzo’s chairman is  departing the British neobank months after shareholders lobbied for his removal.

Gary Hoffman, who joined Monzo in 2019, will leave his post next month, the company said in a statement provided to PYMNTS Tuesday.

Karen Peacock will become the company’s interim chair while Monzo searches for a permanent chair, the statement added.

“When Gary joined Monzo, we had 1.6 million customers and a mission,” Peacock said. “Today we are 10 times that scale, with 16 million customers and products spanning almost every aspect of our customers’ financial lives, and are evermore devoted to our mission to make money work for everyone.”

Hoffman’s departure comes months after investors last year called for his ouster after the board removed TS Anil as CEO.

Anil was replaced by Google veteran Diane Layfield in February, and has since been given a board seat following the demands of top investors. Monzo had initially planned for Anil to leave the board but remain with the company in an advisory capacity.

Anil announced in October that he would hand the reins of the company to new leadership. He framed this as a happy accident: Monzo had been looking for a new chief executive for its British business and found that Layfield was qualified to take the top job.

However, a report by the Financial Times (FT) said Anil was actually asked to leave by the board over concerns about the pace of its international expansion and as well as his commitment to remaining with the company after its expected initial public offering.

But this move led to backlash among some investors, who were surprised by the decision and believed Anil had performed well as CEO. The shareholder effort to remove Hoffman as chair ended in January after negotiations between the two sides, an FT report on the board change said.

Hoffman said that while it was “tempting” to remain for his full nine-year term, it “feels like the natural time to depart as Monzo pursues its next phase of growth,” the company statement said.

The FT notes that this conflict revealed tensions around Monzo’s strategy as it looks to expand around the world and compete with Revolut, a much larger U.K. FinTech.

Monzo earlier this year decided to withdraw from the U.S. market, a move that – as PYMNTS wrote – is one that “brings the structural challenges of crossing borders into sharper focus.”

The company had a limited U.S. presence for several years, providing features such as joint accounts and savings tools aimed at digitally native customers.

“Recent reporting indicates that Monzo is now stepping away from that effort, choosing to concentrate on markets where it already has scale and regulatory footing,” PYMNTS added. “And the U.S. incumbents, large FinTechs and infrastructure providers already compete on similar terms.”