Prospa appoints ME Bank marketer as former CMO joins Deputy

Prospa's new CMO Rebecca James joins the small business lender following Luke Targett's departure to join Deputy

Small business lender, Prospa, has recruited ME Bank's Rebecca James as its new CMO, replacing Luke Targett who has joined B2B software company, Deputy, as its new global marketing head.

James joins Prospa after holding a CMO position at ME Bank for almost 4 years, where she led the transformation of the ME brand, simplified the product offering and step-changed customer experience. Her efforts saw the bank increase its customer base by 40 per cent, as well as implement a business-wide customer centric culture that transformed the bank into a digitally led business.

Prior to ME Bank, James held the position of managing director at CX agency, Lavender, where covered a broad range of clients such as Westpac, BT Financial Group, Ikea, Microsoft, Coles, Telstra and Qantas.

“Prospa is making a huge difference for small business owners all over Australia and the calibre of the people I’ll be working with makes me think this will be an incredible opportunity for me,” James said. “Prospa has already built an amazing proposition that’s attracted over 12,000 small businesses and I’m excited to be joining the team to help step-change growth.”

Meanwhile Prospa’s former CMO, Luke Targett, has joined B2B business software company, Deputy, winner of the Deloitte Tech Fast50 in Australia.

At Deputy, Targett will be responsible for leading the global marketing function to create awareness of the Deputy brand and to continue building on the customer acquisition success journey the company is on, reporting directly to Deputy CEO and co-founder, Ashik Ahmed.

“Luke comes to us with over 20 years of business experience in helping business owners to grow their businesses,” Ahmed said. “His invaluable industry insights and proven expertise in developing strategies for accelerating business growth and driving brand awareness will be pivotal in helping expand the reach and demand for our business solution.

“This will enable us to keep pioneering new horizons in tech and pushing the limits of what we can achieve here at Deputy. Gaining Luke is a big win for the company and heralds an exciting time ahead.”

Prior to his position at Prospa, Targett held a senior leadership role at Samsung, served as global CMO for OFX during its IPO, was the head of Vodafone’s small business marketing team in Australia and held senior roles at AAPT and HP. For the last 15 years, he has specialised in finance and technology sectors, building challenger brands and driving customer acquisition.

“I’m really thrilled to be joining Deputy at such an exciting stage of their business journey,” Targett said. “With a dedicated and innovative leadership team that inspire a powerful culture of enthusiasm and creativity throughout the company, my mission will be to understand the pain points of the Deputy and leverage their incredible product market fit to deliver on the huge opportunity for growth that Deputy has in front of it.”

The decision to appoint a global CMO comes on the back of the company receiving US$25 million of Series A investment from Boston based VC fund, OpenView Partners back in January. Since receiving the funding, Deputy has significantly increased its global headcount, almost doubling their product engineering team. 

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