Dive Brief:

• Ally has promoted its chief audit executive, Stephanie Richard, to chief risk officer, the bank said Wednesday. She succeeds Jason Schugel.
• With the promotion of Richard, Meghan Ryan has been elevated to chief audit executive, according to a news release. Most recently, Ryan was CFO for Ally’s consumer and commercial banking businesses.
• And Lindsay Sacknoff will join the Detroit-based bank Jan. 13 as head of deposits and Ally’s investment unit, including customer care and experience. She now leads USAA’s payments and omnichannel sales and services organization.

Dive Insight:

The appointments reflect some shaping of the executive team by relatively new CEO Michael Rhodes. Rhodes took the helm of the $193 billion-asset bank in April, following the departure of CEO Jeffrey Brown. 

Prior to joining Ally, Rhodes spent a brief period as the CEO of Discover, but left not long after Discover announced it agreed to be acquired by Capital One. 

In September, Ally said it was appointing Hope Mehlman to the role of chief legal and corporate affairs officer, effective Dec. 2. Mehlman is Discover’s chief legal officer, where she was hired in late 2022 and overlapped with Rhodes. 

“In joining the company earlier this year, I partnered closely with the leadership team to take a fresh look at our leadership structure, and we have made some shifts to deliver increased value for our customers, employees and shareholders,” Rhodes said in Wednesday’s release.

Richard, a 27-year veteran of Ally, has been the digital bank’s audit chief since 2018. Richard has held various roles in finance, treasury and risk management, including deputy chief risk officer. 

Schugel, who had been the bank’s chief risk officer since 2018, will “transition to an interim senior advisor role before leaving the company,” the bank said in the release. 

Ryan has been with the lender 13 years, occupying various finance and treasury roles. 

Richard’s and Ryan’s appointments, along with the elevation of Sean Leary to chief financial planning and investor relations officer, support the bank’s “core focus on managing risk and adapting to what's ahead,” Rhodes said in the release. 

Leary had been head of investor relations and corporate financial planning and analysis; he assumes responsibility for all business-line CFO duties and continues reporting to Ally CFO Russ Hutchinson.

Ally’s auto delinquencies and net charge-offs rose in the third quarter, compared to the second. As the bank tightens underwriting in the retail auto segment, executives have projected net charge-offs normalizing in the medium term, Jefferies analyst John Hecht wrote in an October note recapping the bank’s third-quarter earnings.

Sacknoff, who will report to Rhodes, will be based in Charlotte, North Carolina, home of the bank’s corporate center. 

Sacknoff would have known Rhodes from her time at TD: Before joining USAA, Sacknoff spent about a decade at TD and held various roles, including head of U.S. consumer deposits, products and payments at the tail end of her time at the Canadian lender, according to her LinkedIn profile. 

Rhodes himself spent about a dozen years at TD before his stint as Discover’s CEO.

Rhodes said he plans to work with Sacknoff “to evolve our distinctive advantages and further hone our focus on where we can compete and win in the marketplace.”

Once Sacknoff arrives, Anand Talwar, head of deposits and president of Ally’s invest unit, will move to the bank’s CFO group to spearhead enterprise transformation efforts, an Ally spokesperson said. Talwar will report to Hutchinson.