Bill Crager will step down as chief executive of wealth tech company Envestnet on March 31. 

Crager served as CEO since 2020 and plans to serve as a senior adviser for the Berwyn, Pa.-based company, focusing on client and partner relationships, according to a Jan. 8 Envestnet release.

Board Chair James Fox will serve as the interim CEO.

“The board of directors will initiate a search for a successor, considering internal and external candidates, with assistance from an independent executive search firm,” an Envestnet spokesperson told Bank Automation News. 

Envestnet has been restructuring, reportedly exploring the sale of its data arm, Yodlee, which could fetch it some $400 million, according to JPMorgan.  

The industry continues to experience consolidation and demand for advice is growing, the spokesperson said. “The convergence of these trends is driving financial institutions to explore new ways to operate more efficiently and drive growth.”

Envestnet also said in a release that it plans the following launches this year: 

• Envestnet Payments, a Stripe-enabled billing solution for financial advisers; 
• MoneyGuide Single Page Plan, a snapshot of a customer’s portfolio; and 
• RIA Growth Lab, technology and data insights for money managers. 

Wells Fargo appoints Furman to scale cloud use  

Wells Fargo has appointed Dmitri Furman as its new head of cloud operating model and developer experience, according to Furman’s Jan. 8 LinkedIn blog post.

Furman will focus on showing chief intelligence officers of businesses that bank with Wells Fargo how to use cloud capabilities, “elevating cloud from merely a computing platform within the bank to the premier computing platform of choice,” he wrote in his post. 

The $1.7 trillion bank is working with Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure to move its operations to the cloud, Steve Hagerman, CIO of consumer technology at Wells Fargo, discussed this last year at BAS US 2023.

Microsoft will function as the bank’s primary public cloud provider while Google Cloud will provide additional business-critical public cloud services like using AI and data to develop personalized customer experience tools, according to a September 2021 release. 

Sopra Banking Software names COO, CCO 

Technology provider Sopra Banking Software has appointed a new chief operating officer and a new chief commercial officer, according to the Paris-based company’s Jan. 11 release. 

Tobias Unger, formerly an executive at Merrill Lynch and UBS Investment Bank, has joined Sopra as its COO, while Raouf Mhenni, a former executive at Fidelity and IBM, was appointed as the CCO of the company in October, the release stated.

“Tobias spent a large part of his career on the banking side of the financial industry before transitioning to financial software company Avaloq,” Chief Executive Eric Bierry told BAN. “This gives him a unique vantage point on our clients’ expectations at the intersection of banking and software, as he has experience with both the internal operations of banks and financial institutions and the technology that they need to power those operations. 

“Unger will specifically focus on our internal operations with the goal of creating new efficiencies that will enable us to scale delivery of cloud and SaaS-based solutions to banks and financial institutions around the world,” Bierry said. 

Mhenni has been at Sopra Steria since 2008 and joined Sopra Banking Software in 2020.

“Mhenni’s role centers around the individual digitization journeys of each of our customers and working with our sales and marketing teams to provide them with banking and lending solutions,” he said. 

Sopra works with Santander Bank, Societe Generale and TD Auto Finance, according to the company’s website. 

Grisham appointed as SVP of Global Sales at PayQuicker  

PayQuicker, a global instant payment company, has appointed a new senior vice president of global sales.

The Rochester, N.Y.-based company announced the hire of Gabriel Grisham, as SVP of global sales for their Payouts OS platform, according to the company’s Nov. 16 release.

In this role, Grisham will scale the reach of Payouts OS into untapped industries and broaden its reach in global markets. Grisham will also oversee the strategic expansion of the sales organization, building on the initial market momentum of PayQuicker’s leading payout orchestration platform in key industry sectors

Grisham is focused on “getting the word out” about PayQuicker’s services as the company is currently in “discovery mode,” he told BAN.

The company aims to expand its offerings to new market verticals like gig and creator economy along with payroll and B2B accounts payables, he said.

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