Financial infrastructure company TrueLayer has strengthened its leadership team by hiring former Amazon executive and American Express product leader Ossama Soliman as its first chief product officer.
Things are going fast now for TrueLayer. The open banking company added $25m to its coffers via a Series C round in September. Now, it has added an industry veteran to take the company to the next step.
A highly experienced engineer, product leader and general manager, Soliman joins TrueLayer as the firm continues its global growth, adding connectivity across Europe, and expanding it’s open banking platform for payments and data. As CPO, Soliman will define and manage product strategy and development across TrueLayer’s product, engineering and design teams.
“Finance is going through a transformation of epic proportions as each financial product, service and process will eventually become accessible as a service through an API call,” Soliman said. “In the same way that lowering the cost of building software products led to an exponential increase in the number of products and the level of specialisation, a similar phenomena is happening in finance.”
“This will lead to a cambrian explosion of new services from financial and non-financial companies that are more specialised and can serve customers who have historically been excluded or ill-served by financial services. This transformation is underpinned by financial infrastructure that is being built today. Getting to help democratise access to finance through TrueLayer’s open banking platform is incredibly exciting.”
Having accepted the role, he will move across the pond from New York to London. “Living in London has always been something that we wanted to do as a family, it is such a vibrant city, with a huge technology and FinTech community,” he says. “TrueLayer appealed to me because it is at the leading edge of open banking and is incredibly ambitious in its objectives. Hearing the co-founders Francesco and Luca’s vision and mission was inspiring. While it was already clear to me that this was a firm who had built an incredibly talented team, it also mattered that the firm’s approach to culture and its values were also aligned to mine.”
Francesco Simoneschi, CEO and co-founder of TrueLayer, added, “The CPO position is hugely important for us as we continue our global expansion. Ossama’s track record speaks for itself and his wealth of knowledge and experience will be critical during the next phase of our growth. He is passionate about how technology can change lives for the better and the entire team was impressed by his ideas and drive. I’m delighted that with his talent and experience, and with all the options available to him, he wanted to join the TrueLayer family. I have no doubt that he will have a huge impact on our business, our products and our ongoing success.”
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