Dive Brief:

• Blockchain startup Figure has hired Brex and SoFi alum Michael Tannenbaum to succeed co-founder Mike Cagney as CEO, effective immediately, the company said Tuesday.
• Tannenbaum joins Figure during what Cagney, in a statement, called “a pivotal period of growth.” The company is exploring an initial public offering. It submitted paperwork to that effect with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month.
• With Tannenbaum’s hire, Cagney becomes Figure’s executive chair. He’ll continue to serve as CEO of a digital asset-focused subsidiary, Figure Markets, which will not be part of the IPO, Bloomberg reported.

Dive Insight:

The hire reunites Cagney and Tannenbaum, who worked together at SoFi from 2014 to 2017, with Cagney as CEO, and Tannenbaum as chief revenue officer.

“It feels like a homecoming,” Tannenbaum wrote Tuesday in a LinkedIn post. Tannenbaum thanked Figure’s customers, partners and employees “for building such a valuable ecosystem.”

“You made it easy for me to want to join you,” he wrote.

Figure provides a landing spot for Tannenbaum, who, until January, served more than six years at the fintech Brex. (Tannenbaum continues to serve on the company’s board.) He spent the first four of those years as CFO and chief business officer and the last two as chief operating officer, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Figure applied for a national bank charter in 2020, but the company’s initial application did not include plans to get deposit insurance. The Conference of State Bank Supervisors sued the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to block the application’s progress. Figure amended the application in 2021 and the CSBS dropped its suit. But Figure withdrew the application last year, saying the company was focusing “on other areas of growth with a broad set of established bank partners.”

One of those areas is home equity lines of credit. Figure launched a HELOC wholesale platform last year, allowing consumers to be approved for a loan in minutes. It also launched an AI-powered chatbot meant to provide customer support and hasten the HELOC origination process.

“With its proven ability to develop cutting-edge technological solutions to streamline the HELOC lending process, Figure has cemented itself as one of the most exciting companies in fintech,” Tannenbaum said in a statement Tuesday.

Tannenbaum has previous experience in the housing sphere. Among his roles at SoFi: senior vice president of the mortgage unit.

Cagney said Tannenbaum’s “outstanding track record of implementing transformative capital market solutions at global fintech companies, keen ability to attract and nurture top talent, and deep understanding of our business” make him the right person to lead Figure.

“I’ve admired Figure from afar over the past six years for its ambitious goal of transforming private credit markets and the disruptive way in which it decreased costs and inefficiencies in the housing finance industry,” Tannenbaum wrote Tuesday in his LinkedIn post. “It’s important that by transforming outdated systems on the backend, Figure makes a meaningful impact on consumers all over the country.”