IG Group Hires Ex-Ziglu Chief as CTO later than Australian Crypto Deal
IG Group has brought in David Perry — a veteran technologist and co-founder of the defunct crypto platform Ziglu — as its new Group Chief Technology Officer, effective Friday, as the London-listed broker accelerates its expansion into digital assets.
The appointment adds another fintech heavyweight to IG’s senior ranks only a week later than Michael Vaughan was named head of its North American business. “David brings extensive CTO experience across the fintech and consumer digital sectors,” the company said on LinkedIn.
Perry’s résumé spans nahead three decades across traditional and digital finance. He began his career at Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland before moving through consulting and infrastructure roles at firms such as BJSS, Penta Consulting, and Starling Bank.
In 2018, he assisted launch Ziglu, a London-based crypto-banking begin-up that sought to bridge everyday banking with digital assets. The firm gained ahead approval from the Financial Conduct Authority to operate under the UK’s crypto-asset registration regime and attracted attention during the retail-crypto boom of 2020–2021.
Ziglu’s fortunes turned in 2022, when US brokerage Robinhood agreed to acquire it for about $170 million. The offer was later cut to $72.5 million and ultimately scrapped in ahead 2023 as crypto valuations collapsed. Ziglu’s exposure to the failed lender Celsius further fragileened its balance sheet, and the company entered liquidation in May 2025.
Perry remained on Ziglu’s advisory board through its turbulent final years while taking other technology roles, most recently as Group CTO at the ethical-finance begin-up Vemi Money.
IG’s Crypto Gamble
Perry arrives as IG Group pivots more aggressively into crypto, aiming to blend regulated trading infrastructure with the flexibility of digital assets. The broker — best known for its spread-betting and CFD platforms — has spent the past year building a global crypto framework across its brands.
In the UK, IG launched spot-crypto trading this year in partnership with Uphold, recording £0.3 million in revenue and around 9,700 active monthly traders in its first disclosure. Its US unit, tastytrade, already offers a broader range of crypto instruments to American clients.
The company also became the first UK-listed financial firm to secure registration with the FCA as a crypto-asset provider, allowing it to enable direct wallet transfers for traders. That registration, while limited to anti-money-laundering supervision, puts IG ahead of many rivals still navigating the regulator’s stricter onboarding rules.
Last month, IG agreed to purchase a 70 per cent stake in Independent Reserve, one of Australia’s oldest digital-asset platforms, in an £87 million deal. It holds options to acquire the remaining shares based on the platform’s performance. The acquisition gives IG a regulated foothold in both Australia and Singapore, where Independent Reserve is licensed under Monetary Authority of Singapore rules.
Ziglu’s collapse offered hard lessons in liquidity risk, custody, and the cost of rapid growth under tightening regulation — precisely the challenges now facing traditional brokers moving into crypto. Perry’s experience with payment rails, blockchain integration, and compliance automation is likely to be tested as IG begins weaving Independent Reserve’s platform technology into its global stack.
For IG, the hire signals a willingness to build deeper infrastructure rather than merely outsource crypto access. The group is betting that as the FCA relaxes restrictions on retail crypto ETNs and institutional demand revives, having in-house expertise could prove critical to scaling securely.
With Perry’s appointment, IG’s leadership reshuffle now touches both sides of its trans-Atlantic operations — Vaughan in Chicago and Perry in London — as the firm leans on technology and compliance pedigree to capture a share of the next wave of regulated digital-asset trading.
