Oportun Financial Corporation announced that on April 15, 2026, the board of directors of Company appointed Doug Bland as Chief Executive Officer of the Company, effective as of April 20, 2026 . Kathleen Layton and Gaurav Rana, the two members of the joint Office of the CEO of the Company and co-principal executive officers of the Company, will no longer serve in those roles, effective as of immediately prior to the Effective Date. Ms. Layton will continue in her current role as the Company?s Chief Legal Officer and Mr. Rana will continue in his current role as the Company?s Senior Vice President, General Manager, Lending.
Doug Bland, 58, has been serving on the board of directors of WebBank, a leading bank-as-a-service institution, since September 2025 and Creditly Inc., an AI-driven financial wellness fintech, since April 2025. Concurrent with joining Oportun and its Board, Mr. Bland will step down from the board of WebBank. From September 2017 until July 2024, Mr. Bland served in various positions at PayPal Inc., most recently as SVP & General Manager, Consumer Business.
Mr. Bland also served as the President and Chief Operating Officer of Swift Financial, a venture-backed small business lender, from 2015 until it was acquired by PayPal in 2017. From 2004 to 2015, Mr. Bland served in various roles at Bank of America, most recently as SVP, Small Business Products and Risk. Mr. Bland received an M.B.A. from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and a B.A. from Hendrix College.
Mr. Bland brings over 30 years of experience in building and leading consumer financial services businesses, from high-growth startups to global enterprises. He currently serves on the boards of directors of WebBank, a national issuer of consumer and small business credit products, and Creditly . Concurrent with joining Oportun and its Board, Mr. Bland will step down from the board of WebBank.
Mr. Bland previously spent nearly seven years in senior leadership roles at PayPal, most recently as Senior Vice President and General Manager of its Consumer Business, where he led a global portfolio spanning digital wallets, peer-to-peer payments, buy-now-pay-later, consumer and small business credit, and Venmo. In that role, he oversaw the end-to-end strategy for PayPal?s global consumer ecosystem, driving strategic and operational unification across a highly distributed organization to improve profitability, customer engagement, and cost efficiency. Mr. Bland led PayPal?s Global Credit business, which included lines of credit, unsecured revolving products, pay-in-4 solutions and installment loans to consumers, while consistently delivering strong risk-adjusted returns across a complex enterprise and multi-jurisdictional regulatory environment.
Before PayPal, Mr. Bland served as President & COO of Swift Financial, a small business lender, where he built the credit, compliance, and operational infrastructure that enabled rapid and responsible portfolio growth, and co-led Swift Financial through its acquisition by PayPal in 2017. Earlier in his career, Mr. Bland spent more than a decade at Bank of America as Senior Vice President, Small Business Products & Risk, where he led credit strategy and product management across one of the largest small business lending portfolios in the United States, including through the 2008 financial crisis. Prior to that, he held leadership roles with increasing responsibility across Stephens Inc., SunTrust, and Textron Financial, where he rose to Division President before leading the divestiture of the business to MBNA.
