Investors
What is B-North?
We’re currently in the process of applying for our banking licence, aiming to disrupt the UK business lending market. The majority of lending to small and medium businesses (or SMEs) is through the big High Street banks – but they have outdated ‘legacy’ systems, rigid computer algorithms, and faceless, centralised processing centres. SMEs have to jump through hoops and face an impersonal ‘computer says no’ approach, with it taking an average of more than four months before they get their cash, meaning their development plans have to be put on hold.
B-North is going to change all that.
Founded by a team of experts with decades of experience in financial services, including launching and scaling challenger banks such as First Direct, Atom Bank, Metro Bank and Santander UK, B-North is using the latest in cloud-based technology, married with face to face relationship building. This means we will really get to know our borrowers and their business so we can provide lending solutions fit their needs. We’ve also started with a blank sheet of paper and worked with business owners to build our customer journey from the ground up, and this – together with our technology – means we can reduce that time to cash for borrowers to as little as two weeks.
Watch our short video, which tells you what B-North is all about...
Hardman & Co, the independent investor research company, have provided their latest analysis on B-North. Click here to read more...
Size of the market/opportunity
- £150bn of SME lending in the UK
- SMEs account for more than 50% of UK private sector turnover over 60% of UK jobs
- 23% of SMEs say they have lost opportunities due to a lack of funding
- Massive demand means many are turning to the brokers, whose numbers have doubled in the last few years.
Achievements so far
In December 2018 B-North was formally established as we closed the first tranche of our £4m seed funding round. We pre-empted this with our first Regulatory Business Plan submission to the PRA and FCA in November 2018.
Since then we have:
- recruited a market leading team, including the appointment of our chair Ron Emerson CBE
- selected the best in cloud-native technology - nCino (loans origination) and Mambu (core banking technology)
- established a strategic partnership with nCino and Mambu in a world first - to seamlessly integrate the propositions to develop a market leading banking platform
- built significant momentum in our build and the configuration of our IT platform
- been formally invited by the UK’s combined regulator (PRA and FCA) to submit our banking licence application
- submitted our full application in September 2019
- Regulatory capital is the only outstanding threshold condition for securing our banking licence. This will be secured via our £20m Series A raise. Once commitments are in place we will submit the relevant information to the regulators to obtain investor approval.
How to invest
We are currently extending our Bridge Round. You can find out more at growthfunders.com
If you are interested in finding out more about the investment opportunities B-North provides, please get in touch to find out more.