Capital One co-founder steps down from Zopa board
Nigel Morris, co-founder of credit card giant Capital One, has stepped down as a non-executive director of Zopa’s board after three years in the role.
Morris joined the peer-to-peer lender’s group board in May 2017, as part of an investment by QED Investors, where is he managing partner.
A filing by Zopa on Companies House has shown that he has stepped down from the position and a company spokesperson has confirmed to Peer2Peer Finance News that he is no longer involved in the business.
Morris co-founded credit card firm Capital One in 1994 and over the space of 10 years grew it from an emerging start-up to a billion-pound company.
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Over the past 12 years, he has been managing partner of QED Investors, a venture capital firm focused on early stage investing in disruptive financial services companies in the US, UK and Latin America.
At the time of his appointment to Zopa’s board, Morris said that he shared management’s ambitions to provide a better service to consumers, while making Zopa a trusted household brand.
Zopa co-founder Giles Andrews said at the time that Morris was one of the few entrepreneurs in the world to have started a financial services business and taken it to massive scale.
“During Nigel’s 10 years at Capital One, the company’s earnings per share growth and return on equity both exceeded 20 per cent per year,” he said. “Nigel is a natural fit for us as he pioneered a data driven approach both to credit decisioning and marketing.”
Read more: Zopa boosts its support for borrowers with Paylink Solutions data tool
There have been other board changes at Zopa recently, including the departure of group general counsel and company secretary Olivia Broderick and non-executive director Charles Birnbaum.
In June, three Zopa backers joined the group board – Scott Jones, Jeppe Zink and Nicholas Aspinall – while Tim Levene, chief executive of another Zopa backer, Augmentum Fintech, stepped down from his role as investors director after eight years.