Prospa has tapped Ubank's former Chief Operating Angelo Azar for the same role at the fintech, non-bank lender as it continues to scale. Reporting directly to Prospa's Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder Greg Moshal, Sydney-based Azar, who began his tenure on 7 September, has been tasked with leading Prospa's customer operations teams across sales operations, collections, customer support and resolutions in Australia and New Zealand.
For Azar, the immediate priority is not to arrive with a predetermined playbook, but to understand how Prospa operates today and where there is an opportunity to make the lending journey simpler and more efficient.
"I'm just really excited to get into it," he told Australian Broker. "This beginning period is about listening and learning. My entire plan to begin with is to spend time with people, spend time with our customers, really just about listening to what we do today and where we can simplify the process, and improve the customer experience even more.
"How do we make it so the brokers are working with us even more, and advocating for us with their customers even more?" Azar continued. "And how do we make it so that the experience that we continue to iterate on is a simpler and faster one? So whether it's directly, or through our close-knit broker and partner network, just building upon that and continuing to work with these customers and our brokers to hear what they think we can do better and how we can be faster and simpler over time. I'm really keen to get my hands dirty and get those outcomes."
Azar joins from Ubank, where he also served as chief operating officer. His resume spans approximately two decades and includes several senior-level roles, including stints at Honey Insurance, Hollard Insurance Australia and Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA). He has experience in operational leadership, financial services, insurance, digital banking, scaling customer operations and technology transformation.
Moshal said Azar was the right fit for the job because he "brings deep customer operations experience, a strong track record of leading teams through growth and a practical approach to using technology and AI to make businesses simpler and more effective."
Prospa was founded in Australia by Moshal and Beau Bertoli in 2012. Seven years ago, the New Zealand edition was launched. Prospa now offers loans to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across both countries that have been established for at least six months. Loan amounts can be anywhere between $5,000 and $1 million, and approvals can be in 24 hours.
The firm, which surpassed more than $5 billion in funding this past February, is reintroducing the chief operating role as it looks to its next phase of growth.
Moshal described the decision to reinstate the COO role as "an important investment in how we grow. Angelo knows how to scale how we operate while keeping our customers and our people at the centre. His leadership will help us move faster and deliver more value for small businesses across Australia and New Zealand."
Meanwhile, Azar said what attracted him to the job was Prospa's focus on people and its customers.
"Prosper's in a brilliant position in terms of having that focus on customers, particularly because that's where I see ongoing opportunity," he said. "The proof is in the pudding, in terms of the $5 billion in funding, supporting more than 45,000 businesses and the network of 25,000 partners. It was really a no-brainer for me to join the team."
