Monzo co-founder and deputy chief executive Paul Rippon is standing down to spend time running an alpaca farm with his wife in Northumberland.

In a blog posted to LinkedIn, Rippon, who co-founded Monzo with chief executive Tom Blomfield in 2015, announced that he was leaving the challenger bank to “go and enjoy life” after 27 years working in financial services and eight years away from his farm, where his wife Debbie has taken the lion’s share of work setting up their business Barnacre Alpacas.

“Building a fast growing bank takes its toll and even reducing my ‘work hours’ didn’t reduce the cognitive and emotional overhead,” he explained. “With no farming background or experience we now have over 300 alpacas and welcome many visitors to our farm and holiday cottages.”

His LinkedIn states that he is currently “enjoying a break and driving my tractor”.

Rippon started his career at NatWest before moving to Northern Rock and AIB in 2012, where he held the post of banking operations for two years.

Following this he joined Starling Bank as chief risk officer before leaving to co-found Monzo. Rippon has also held a number of mentoring and teaching roles in The City and is a former member of the London Institute of Banking and Finance Academic Audit Committee.

In his valedictory post he paid tribute to his colleagues at Monzo, describing the experience of building a FinTech unicorn as an “exciting and demanding journey”.

Rippon said he plans to help Debbie with the Alpaca farm for the next few months before returning to spend one day a week fulfilling a non-executive, coaching or consulting role.

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