FinTech company SoFi to add 400 Delaware workers by 2018

SoFi, an online provider of personal loans, will add 400 workers to its Claymont office by the end of 2018. 

The six-year-old, San Francisco-based private company offers its customers – whom they refer to as members – mortgages, student and personal loans and insurance and wealth management products. It has about seven offices across the country. 

SoFi entered Delaware in February when it acquired Claymont-based Zenbanx for an undisclosed sum. The Zenbanx purchase bolstered SoFi's portfolio of online personal finance offerings. Among the former Zenbanx products that now belong to SoFi are software that enables customers to transfer international currency through mobile devices and an app that allows users to transfer money through the sound of their voice.

About 36 Zenbanx workers became SoFi employees as part of the deal. 

SoFi has vowed to ramp up the former Zenbanx office with an aggressive hiring plan that will see it add 100 workers by August, 200 workers by the end of the year and 400 employees by the end of 2018.

"We have been out recruiting and hiring in Delaware," said Chandi Gracey, director of operations for SoFi, who is relocating to the First State from San Francisco.

"We plan to start with about 65 folks and continue the hiring process until we get to 100," she said. 

The majority of the openings are call center jobs, but SoFi is also looking to fill IT, business development and management positions. Of the first 200 openings, 130 will be call center positions, 30 will be mortgage operations jobs and the remaining 40 will be IT, business development and office staff.

Daily and evening call center shifts are available for every day of the week with an average starting salary of around $16 per hour, Gracey said. Benefits include student loan repayment, tuition reimbursement, and full employer-paid health care for a worker's family.

Perhaps the best perk is free lunch or dinner, depending on the shift. Rob Meck, SoFi's senior vice president of operations, said details are still being worked out on whether the free food will be offered as an on-site cafeteria or if SoFi will tap a local caterer.

But the free food doesn't just end at meal time. Each SoFi office includes a cafe fully stocked with drinks, sodas and snacks, all at no charge to the employees.

"The cafes are not a big expense to the company and it is a nice benefit that workers don't have to plug quarters into a vending machine," Meck said. 

SoFi is hiring at a time when traditional banks are cutting jobs in Delaware. HSBC Bank USA and Barclays are moving a combined 600 positions out of the state. Capital One eliminated its Delaware mortgage operations, laying off more than 100 workers. 

"This is a great opportunity for SoFi to pick up the best and the brightest from those organizations," Meck said. 

To accommodate the new workers, SoFi will begin upgrading Zenbanx's former Naamans Road office. Meck did not disclose how much SoFi will pay to renovate the 27,000-square-foot space, but upgrades include adding a training center.

"Zenbanx had a nice office, but it was not quite the caliber we want to provide for our employees," Meck said. "We want to transform it into something that would be more typical of a San Francisco FinTech environment." 

SoFi was founded by Mike Cagney and a couple of his Stanford Graduate School of Business classmates. It began as a student loan refinancing company and quickly expanded into other personal loan products. Last year, SoFi said it originated $8 billion worth of loans, up from $5 billion in 2015. 

As the popularity of FinTech increases among millennials, so does investor interest in SoFi. In February, SoFi closed a $500 million funding round, although it is not clear how much the bank actually raised. It disclosed that Silver Lake, a Silicon Valley private equity firm, SoftBank and GPI capital were among the contributors. 

The funding will be used to enter the Canadian and Australian markets. 

FinTech, slang for financial technology firms, is becoming big business. Such banks offer faster transaction times and the opportunity to use online currencies including bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Since FinTech services don't require traditional banking branches, products are less expensive than those being offered by standard banks.

And Wall Street is noticing. FinTech firms attracted $19 billion in investment last year, up from $12 billion in 2013, according to data from the U.S. Department of Commerce. 

Contact Jeff Mordock at (302) 324-2786, on Twitter @JeffMordockTNJ or jmordock@delawareonline.com.