Bank licence & Funding
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.
The Bridge funding round has been a great success and has resulted in £2.8m total funding from 385 investors - of whom 38% were new investors - and includes £0.5m of Management investment
The Series A raise is progressing well with high quality institutional investors to date committing £13.75m, 69% of target. We aim to secure the remaining commitments in the coming weeks prior to sharing details with the Regulators for their approval.
Commercial Lending
The market environment remains challenging for SMEs in this unprecedented economic climate and access to finance remains key to the survival of businesses. The broker network helped originate £27bn of lending in 2020 including £6.1bn of CBILS facilities, with increased demand for finance year on year, a trend expected to continue resulting in the UK banking and finance industry having to deliver unprecedented levels of support to SMEs throughout 2021 and beyond.
We continue to work with our partners and professional contacts to test our products and positioning in the market. The results are very encouraging with B-North being able to provide an indicative offer to a staggering 78% of lending opportunities. We have clear USPs which differentiate us from the competition and a highly skilled team who pride themselves on delivering tailored finance at pace. Our broker partners are fully engaged and eager for us to work together to support the SME population by bringing our outstanding proposition to market.
- High calibre team ready to launch Manchester Pod
The North West Pod is the flagship office for B-North, we have all our recruitment lined up and eager to start, we have secured some amazing talent with diverse backgrounds which creates a really strong team.
With the customer at the heart of everything we have created a lending journey that is as frictionless as possible, and we are in a great place to commence lending.
Team
Further development of the team:
A highly experienced commercial banker has joined as Treasurer and will play a key role in the running of the bank. Matt was previously Finance Director at the Furness Building Society, before which he was Head of Debt Capital Markets at RBS spinout Williams and Glyn. Before this, Matt spent 15 years at Barclays, culminating in his role as Managing Director (Treasury).
- Jackie Ewer, Head of Operational Risk & Compliance
Has over 30 years' Financial Services experience, holding senior manager roles within Audit, Risk & Compliance across Global Banking & Markets including Citigroup, Bank of America and RBS. Prior to joining B-North, Jackie held the SMF16 Head of Compliance and Operational Risk for Al Rayan Bank and most recently was providing Audit consultancy services for Bank of America.
- Chris Pendlebury, Development & Integration Manager
Has a long track record of managing the deployment of IT systems and will oversee internal development of B-North applications and integration and will ensure regular updates of the platform.
- Matthew Kenny, Senior QA and Test Manager
Brings with him a wealth of experience in financial services as a testing analyst and manager, having overseen testing at leading payments company and Mastercard subsidiary Vocalink and will oversee the implementation of B-North's QA testing capability.
