Chip, a UK-based automatic savings app, announced on Monday it has appointed Tom Evans as its new Chief Technology Officer. According to Chip, Evans joins the fintech from 10X Banking and brings more than 24 years of experience in software development and engineering. Prior to moving into the fintech space, he led engineering teams at Ocado and Amazon.
Chip reported that as CTO, Evans will lead product and engineering teams with the aim of building and delivering new features, including the upcoming investment platform, ChipX. Speaking about his appointment, Evans stated:
“I’m very excited to join Chip. They are building an amazing app that is delivering real benefits to our customers. I’m really looking forward to scaling and shaping the product and engineering teams to meet the challenge of building great new features for our growing user base, while focusing on the highest standards of quality and reliability. Chip has a great future ahead as it enables its customers to continue to build savings, and I’m thrilled to be a part of that journey.”
Simon Rabin, Founder and CEO of Chip, added:
“Chip is not just a business that uses technology for some of its processes – our entire business is our technology. This past year, we’ve managed to build an incredible engineering team, and now, the time has come to level up and take the next ambitious steps on our journey. This is where Tom comes in. He brings a wealth of experience in building engineering and product quality at Amazon, Ocado Group and Oracle, and I know he will do amazing things at Chip, too.”
As previously reported, Chip is an app that automatically puts money aside for the user into a Chip account. The app is available on both iOS and Android. The company recently reported that it now connects to 18 UK banks. A recent Open Banking update enables savers to leverage AI to adjust by monitoring users’ spending habits and adjust the automatic saves.
Chip’s core savings feature uses AI to analyze savers’ finances and calculate the amount to put aside, before moving the money into an account in their name (with an option to cancel), meaning it was able to pick up on the drop off in spending and adjust savings accordingly.
“Combined with increased manual contributions from savers, this resulted in a sharp rise in the amount put aside during lockdown. June saw the highest average amount put aside per user per month in Chip’s history – £214.70 – which represents a 138% growth compared to June 2019 as well as a 103% increase from March 2020, when lockdown began.”