Kobalt Labs Names Banking Veteran Paul Gallagher to Expand Bank Partnerships

Thirty-year banking operator and risk executive joins as Kobalt expands its risk and compliance platform across financial institutions.

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, October 16, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Kobalt Labs, the AI-native risk and compliance operating system for financial institutions, today announced that Paul Gallagher has joined the company to help lead Bank Partnerships. Gallagher brings more than three decades of experience across banking operations, enterprise risk, and vendor management, most recently as co-founding Chief Operating Officer of Thread Bank.

In his new role, Gallagher will build and deepen Kobalt’s relationships with banks, credit unions, and fintechs, helping institutions modernize, streamline, and strengthen back office operations.

A Career Spent Running and Protecting Financial Institutions

At Thread Bank, Gallagher was a co-founding executive responsible for loan, deposit and branch operations, customer support, IT, information security, project management, corporate real estate, and third-party risk and vendor management. That last mandate gives him first-hand knowledge of the vendor oversight burden Kobalt is built to lift.

Before Thread Bank, Gallagher spent three years at Pinnacle Financial Partners as Senior Strategic Project Manager. Reporting to the Chief Administrative Officer, he served on the Operations and Automation Committee, with a reporting line to the Board Audit Committee, and led post-acquisition strategic initiatives.

His risk and compliance credentials span bank and fintech. As Director of Enterprise Risk Management at PayPal, he drove second-line oversight of finance functions, including vendor management, through the Risk and Control Self-Assessment process. At First Republic Bank, he built the Lending Services Internal Control and Compliance Support function from the ground up.

Gallagher led the launch of Silicon Valley Bank’s Private Bank, running loan, deposit, card, wire, digital and core operations. The business grew to 1,600 clients, $1 billion in assets and $25 million in operating income in three years, with satisfactory regulatory exams and audits.

He spent more than a decade at Wells Fargo in senior roles, including SVP and Head of Private Banking Operations, where he ran a 96-person national support center serving 105 regional offices. As SVP in the Technology and Operations Group, he led the business case to decommission a 450,000-square-foot San Francisco data center, delivering $19 million in annual savings.

Gallagher holds a Master of Business Administration from the Yale School of Management and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University.

“Paul has sat in nearly every seat at a bank: operations, risk, compliance, and the COO chair,” said Kalyani Ramadurgam, CEO and co-founder of Kobalt Labs. “Banks trust people who have carried that responsibility themselves. Paul understands our customers’ problems because he has lived them, and he will help more institutions see what truly modern risk management can look like.”

Momentum at Kobalt

Gallagher joins during a period of rapid growth. In 2026 alone, Kobalt has been selected by banks and credit unions including Core Bank, Republic Bank of Chicago, InTouch Credit Union, ORNL Federal Credit Union, Chesapeake Bank, Middlesex Federal Savings Bank, SmartBank, MVB Bank, and MRV Banks.
Earlier this year, Kobalt raised $12.7 million and was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Finance list. Gallagher’s hire adds senior bank-operator perspective as the company scales its work with community and regional banks, credit unions and fintechs.

About Kobalt Labs

Kobalt Labs is the AI native risk and compliance platform built for financial institutions. Kobalt automates the manual work across third-party risk management, ERM, fintech partner diligence, and marketing compliance by extracting critical evidence from documentation, identifying gaps, and generating risk assessments within minutes. Used by banks, credit unions, and fintechs across the country, Kobalt delivers the consistency, speed, and audit-ready documentation that manual processes cannot match. Learn more at kobaltlabs.com.

Ashi Agrawal
Kobalt Labs
ashi@kobaltlabs.com

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