By Providence Ayanfeoluwa

Kuda, the Money App for Africans has appointed Pavel Khristolubov as Chief Operating Officer, COO and Elena Lavezzi as Chief Strategy Officer, CSO, respectively at the group level with a view to stamping its footprint in the global banking industry.

In a statement, the firm said that the appointments were announced by the Board of Directors of Kuda Technologies Limited as part of the outcome of a diligent recruitment process aimed at acquiring fit-for-purpose candidates to help in driving the vision and mission of the financial institution.

Pavel Khristolubov joined Kuda Technologies from the Tinkoff Bank, a commercial bank in Eastern Europe, where he was responsible for managing efficiency of the workforce both on product development teams and operational platforms, while Elena Lavezzi, an Italian, brings with her, a vast experience garnered over the years from reputable fintech companies including Circle, a global firm that is at the forefront of digital currency innovation, where she rose to the position of Director, Go-To-Market Retail Europe.

Speaking on his appointment, Khristolubov said he was excited to join the management team and looking forward to making his contributions towards the achievement of the overall corporate goals.

He stated: “When investors from Target Global introduced me to the Co-Founder of Kuda, Babs Ogundeyi, I learned a story of an ambitious business enterprise, driven by very humane and people-centric values. I believe in the mission of the company and hope my experience and efforts will help it along the way to realization of our goals.”

In her remarks, Lavezzi said Kuda is well recognized in the African market, with very ambitious expansion plans for the next few months, and backed by top tier venture capitalists like Target Global and Valar that have over a decade of experience in partnering with the most visionary founders across different industries around the world.

Lavezzi stated “The team is amazing. All the people I have met are very talented and have a clear vision of what they want to build. Kuda is building a strong product, providing financial services through its apps and allowing millions of people with internet access to operate a spending account, access instant credit, save money automatically and earn annual interest without the burden of traditional bank charges.

“I believe Kuda has all the ingredients to become a fintech leader in Africa and even beyond.

Kuda (via its operating entity, Kuda MFB Limited) provides financial services to over four million Nigerians through its suite of mobile and web apps. Its customers can operate a spending account, access instant credit, save money automatically and earn annual interest without paying traditional bank charges such as card maintenance fees, account maintenance fees and excessive transfer fees.

However, during Khristolubov tenure as COO, the  bank’s client base grew from seven million to 22 million active clients, and his focus was to keep quality and cost levels under control and implementation of required processes and approaches to scale product and operations teams to meet the challenges of growth.

Prior to his work at Tinkoff Bank, he served as a member of the executive team of DXC Luxoft, a software development company, supporting the company’s growth from the very start to when it became a global player with 20,000 engineers working across 20 countries and locations of the world. His responsibilities included establishing company processes and ensuring efficiency of its management, and on boarding of acquired companies.

More recently, Lavezzi led the Southern European region at Revolut for three years, overseeing growth, business development and marketing before shifting her focus to regulatory matters last year.

She had earlier worked at Uber where she served as Marketing Manager for four years and as well helped Uber launch in the Italian market before moving on to support the growth of the Indian market.