Data network Plaid appoints first president

Data network Plaid has appointed Jen Taylor to the role of president, having previously worked at Cloudflare, Salesforce and Meta.

Taylor joins Plaid as its first president from Cloudflare, where she worked as chief product officer for the past seven years.

Prior to that, she led product initiatives at Salesforce, Meta and Adobe.

Taylor wrote on LinkedIn that, at Plaid, she will be overseeing teams across tech and product, “building the network that will power the future of finance”.

“It’s a unique and dynamic opportunity to partner with the thousands of companies relying on Plaid to drive more positive outcomes for consumers by powering the digital transformation of financial services,” she said.

“Plaid’s obsession with customer outcomes is a real differentiator, and Plaid has the potential to become a critical piece of the financial services industry for generations.”

Plaid chief executive officer Zach Perret

Zach Perret, chief executive officer of Plaid, called her experience of scaling products to meet customer demand “invaluable” as the company expands its platform to support ongoing innovation in financial services.

In a blog post, Perret wrote: “Over the past two years we’ve added new payment, lending, and anti-fraud capabilities on top of our core account linking and onboarding solutions. The demand for these new products has been even greater than we anticipated.

“It’s clear the growth and cost savings that we’re unlocking for our customers is improving outcomes for their end users and their businesses, and we take that responsibility seriously.”

“I am confident Jen is the right person to help us do even more to support the more than 8,500 companies we are fortunate to call customers,” he added.

In November 2023, Plaid established a new entity, which will operate as a consumer reporting agency, that builds solutions for customers who want “ready-made credit risk insights from consumer-permissioned cash flow data”.

The data network also teamed up with US-based Fiserv to enable data sharing through APIs, so that consumers and financial institutions can access their financial information.