A startup out to displace Wall Street banks just hired ex-SEC chairman Arthur Levitt

SoFi, one of the biggest marketplace lenders on the web, is adding a boldface name from Washington to its ranks as the company continues to roll out billions in loans.

Ex-Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt is joining SoFi as an advisor, according to a person familiar with the matter. Levitt confirmed the news when he spoke with Business Insider.

While Levitt has been out of the regulation game for more than a decade, he's been active consulting with developing private companies and is an avid supporter of technology's role on Wall Street.

He also thinks that there will be a shift in how startups are regulated, and it's one he feels is overdue.

"My desire is that regulation would be nationalized," he told Business Insider, adding that he felt some state regulators were approaching their line of work "as a source of revenue" rather than to bring better practices and standards into a budding industry.

Levitt's other advisory roles include PeerIQ, Mirror, Motif Investing and Promontory Financial Group, according to his Twitter bio.

SoFi recently passed the $4 billion mark for funding student loan refinancing, personal loans and mortgages, making it one of the leading marketplace lenders.

The company isn't the only peer-to-peer lender to have hired from more traditional areas of finance.

Earlier this year, small business lender startup Bond Street added Wall Street credit veteran Jerry Weiss to its ranks.

CommonBond, another competitor to SoFi, counts ex-Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit among its investors, and also added Morgan Edwards, another Wall Street veteran, to its executive team as a CFO earlier this summer.