UK challenger bank Recognise appoints Sahil Thapa as CTO

Recognise, a UK-based challenger bank for SMEs, has appointed Sahil Thapa as chief technology officer (CTO).

Recognise’s new CTO Sahil Thapa joins from Deutsche Bank

Thapa joins from Deutsche Bank, where he spent more than ten years. At Deutsche Bank he was most recently responsible for strategy execution, business architecture and data, with a focus on loan businesses in the bank’s corporate and investment banking divisions.

Recognise CEO Bryce Glover says Thapa “has the vision and ability to lead the bank’s technology strategy and give us the tools to help accelerate our growth”.

“Technology has been the bedrock of Recognise since the beginning, and it meant we could build the bank quickly and cost-effectively by partnering with some the sector’s leading fintech providers,” Glover adds.

The CTO’s new challenge will be to guide the development of Recognise’s existing and future tech needs, creating a roadmap of new products and services that cater to the UK’s SME sector.

Heading up the bank’s newly created innovation team, Thapa will be tasked with using tech to build products that create new revenue streams for the challenger.

Thapa says: “Our strategy will be to consolidate and build around Recognise’s existing cloud based digital banking stack, leveraging data driven analytics to assist decision making and build solutions for customer and business needs.

“In a financial services sector where there is growing choice and competition, it is important for banks to maintain customer centricity while continuing to innovate and be relevant to customer needs,” he notes.

Recognise co-founder Jason Oakley stepped down from the role of CEO in March and fellow co-founder Glover was appointed interim CEO, while the search is underway for Oakley’s replacement.