SoFi is hiring Ashish Jain, salesman dismissed by Deutsche Bank

[NEW YORK] Social Finance Inc, an online lender, is hiring Ashish Jain, the securitised-debt salesman terminated from Deutsche Bank last year after an internal probe.

Mr Jain, who ran a sales desk in New York, will help manage SoFi's efforts to bundle up its loans into bonds and sell them to investors, said Chief Executive Officer Mike Cagney.

Deutsche Bank AG's former co-CEO, Anshu Jain, an adviser to SoFi, had worked with Ashish Jain while at the German bank and vouched for him based on that experience, according to a person familiar with the matter.

"We are comfortable with Ashish's character and integrity," Mr Cagney said by phone Wednesday.

"We spent a lot of time talking with folks in the industry and concluded that he is a good actor," he said.

Mr Jain didn't immediately reply to a telephone message left on his mobile phone. Ashish and Anshu Jain are not related.

Ashish Jain was terminated from Deutsche Bank last August after a regulatory inquiry about commercial-mortgage bond trading triggered an internal review, according to Financial Industry Regulatory Authority records.

After reviewing his supervision of his employees and his communications, the lender found that he failed to follow bank policies, the records show.

Trading in mortgage bonds and other securitized debt was under heightened scrutiny after former Jefferies Group bond trader Jesse Litvak was accused, and later convicted, of criminal securities fraud for lying to clients.

In December, a US appeals court overturned Mr Litvak's conviction.

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