Florida may have finally joined other states across the country with its recent stay-at-home order, but that hasn’t stopped SoFi from opening a new office and continuing its hiring spree. The financial services firm began hiring for a Jacksonville, Fla., office with space for 300 new employees last fall, according to an announcement, and has been continuing to onboard fraud prevention specialists, loan review officers and other employees in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
While the company announced its new office was open for business in January, a company spokesperson confirmed that the physical office was “just being completed” as of the beginning of April. “We’ve had temporary space,” said spokesperson Rachel Rosenzweig, adding that the firm has completed the bulk of its hiring for the office. SoFi already had a companywide remote working policy in place prior to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ statewide order, she said.
According to SoFi’s website, there is still at least one opening at the new location, which was officially added to the firm’s regulatory filings at the end of March.
While SoFi didn’t share details on hiring practices during a pandemic, it did note that financial advisors weren’t currently being hired for the Jacksonville operations center, its first permanent location in Florida. SoFi counts over 1,400 employees and 10 permanent office locations. It is headquartered out of San Francisco and includes offices in New York City and Seattle.
“We’re thrilled to expand our SoFi family to Florida,” said CEO Anthony Noto in a statement announcing the company’s expansion earlier this year. “As SoFi grows, we knew we needed to expand our real estate footprint to maintain our top-tier level of support for all of our members across the country.” Noto was unavailable to discuss the new office and how hiring was proceeding in the midst of the pandemic, according to Rosenzweig.
Early last year SoFi launched SoFi Invest, bringing it in competition with trading app Robinhood, among others, and unveiled zero-fee ETFs. The firm bungled a fund swap related to the new funds, generating tax bills for investors as it moved to its own ETFs. It also launched a cash management product, SoFi Money, joining a wave of fintechs seeking to add funds to their ledgers in exchange for interest rate basis points for customers.
