Pinda is bringing in its first chief product officer (CPO) since its founding and moving to upgrade artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven financial services.

Pinda said on Wednesday it appointed Ahn Joong-hyun (안중현), a former vice president at Nexthurs, as CPO.

Ahn has worked for about 20 years in the finance and IT industries, handling service planning, platform development and business model development in commerce, internet-only banks, financial platforms and blockchain.

He joined payment services and fraud detection system (FDS) planning as an early member of Naver Pay. At Toss Bank, he designed key financial services including account opening, FDS, anti-money laundering (AML) and authentication systems.

He later served as corporate lead for Danggeun Pay, expanding the service to more than 9 million subscribers and monthly transaction value of 100 billion won. He also took part in the designation of the innovative financial service "Danggeun Money Account". Most recently, he led a stablecoin-dedicated organisation as a vice president at Nexthurs and oversaw global finance and blockchain businesses.

Pinda plans to use financial data accumulated through its loan comparison service and AI to upgrade services across the board, from searching for financial products to execution and management.

"Based on financial data and AI capabilities, I will help Pinda leap into an 'AI agent-based BaaS (banking as a service)' company," Ahn said. "We will introduce new financial infrastructure that allows anyone to easily and quickly build and operate financial services."