Goldman Taps Uber Executive to Run Its Consumer Bank

By Peter Rudegeair 

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is poaching an engineering executive from Uber Technologies Inc. to run Marcus, its digital-banking unit.

Peeyush Nahar is set to join Goldman on June 1 as a partner and head of its consumer business, according to an internal memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. At Uber, Mr. Nahar oversaw teams that developed software for payments, insurance and financial-technology services. Earlier in his career, he spent 14 years in a variety of roles at Amazon.com Inc., including building out a lending business for merchants selling on the retailer's online marketplace.

Since its 2016 launch, Goldman's Marcus has expanded beyond its original offering -- high-yield savings accounts -- and into unsecured installment loans, personal budgeting software, digital-investing tools and, soon, checking accounts. Goldman also nabbed deals to issue credit cards for Apple Inc. and General Motors Co. and made a pitch for JetBlue Airways Corp.'s credit-card program, the Journal previously reported.

Along the way, Goldman has experienced a number of growing pains, including higher-than-expected loan losses, product delays and executive turnover. Mr. Nahar will fill a role vacated earlier this year when Marcus chief Omer Ismail left Goldman to run Walmart Inc.'s new fintech startup.

One of Mr. Nahar's tasks will be achieving targets that Goldman executives had set for Marcus before the coronavirus pandemic hit last year. Those include amassing more than $20 billion of loan balances and attracting more than $125 billion of deposits by 2024. At the end of March, Marcus had about $8 billion of loan balances and about $100 billion of deposits.

Even after hitting those targets, Goldman will remain a relatively small player in consumer finance. JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s consumer-banking unit, for example, held $432 billion of loans and $1 trillion of deposits at the end of March.

Write to Peter Rudegeair at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 17, 2021 10:14 ET (14:14 GMT)

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