Lending Fintech Oodle launches London Product Development Hub & Ramps up Recruitment ahead of Consumer Market Launch
A fast-growth fintech firm that is revolutionising the car ownership space, has launched a London Product Development Hub and has begun a recruitment drive to build a product focused team in the next six months across a number of areas, including technology, marketing, design and data science.
Having scaled the lending business through UK car retailers rapidly since 2016, Oodle is now approaching its launch into the direct to consumer market with the introduction of an app that will make car buying simple. The new Product Development Hub in London will facilitate the brand’s ongoing growth and make room for new talent that will be key to helping Oodle on its journey to dominating the space of how to buy a car.
There are multiple career opportunities now available at the thriving fintech company, including marketing roles, developer positions, product manager roles and data science openings. Having grown monthly volumes by 600% in the last year alone and having processed £3bn worth of car loan applications since its 2016 launch, as well as raising over £120m of equity and an additional £200m of lending lines from a leading investment bank, Oodle is set for the next stage of its growth. To support this growth, staff numbers at their headquarters have grown from 42 at the end of year one, 78 at the end of year two to 132 now.
After the acquisition of car search engine Carsnip, the brand is building upon its car finance roots to create a holistic consumer experience. This would initially be with an upcoming app, where consumers will be able to seamlessly search for and finance a car at the touch of a button. Thanks to a wealth of experience in the market of providing car finance and working with dealers to facilitate sales, Oodle has been able to conduct a number of tests in the background to further meet the wants and needs of the customer.
This Product Development Hub is additional to the ones already in Oxford and Cardiff, where new recruits will be at the forefront of this product development process.
Tom Stanley, Head of Data at Oodle, spoke about how data science plays a role in the business:
“We’re putting data science at the centre of everything we do. Over the last year this has allowed us to make fast lending decisions for our customers and we believe that we can use a similar data driven approach to make the car buying process as delightful and as hassle-free for the consumer as possible.”
Jonny Clayton, CEO of Oodle, said the following about the London Product Development Hub and recruitment drive:
“These are exciting times in the fintech space and our success so far is testament to the work of our talented team. We’re really excited to grow out our development teams to increase our pace of development and work towards setting the new standards in this market. It’s important for us to find the right people to continue to propel Oodle forward, especially with the upcoming launch of our consumer-facing app; and our Product Development Hub in London seems like a natural step to facilitate that.
“At £55bn the used car market is the biggest retail market in the UK, yet we have not seen the same level of innovation for the consumer as in other retail sectors. The car ownership space has been due an upheaval for some time and we’re proud to be at the helm of revolutionising the process and making car buying simple.”
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