Britain’s first all-digital branchless bank has confirmed it will establish its bricks-and-mortar headquarters in the North-East. The pioneering company will initially recruit around 120 staff, but expects that to treble as the business grows.
Atom Bank is the brainchild of Metro Bank-founder Anthony Thomson and chief executive of First Direct, Mark Mullen. Although the exact location of its new head office has yet to be announced the pair have said it will be in the North-East, and quite possibly on Tyneside.
Almost all of it staff will be recruited locally, partly because the cost base is lower than other potential locations. “Equally important is the fact that the North-East has a great motivated, talented and skilled workforce to draw upon,” added Thomson, who will be Atom’s chairman.
Thomson was ahead of the field when it came to spotting the decline of the high street bank. In 2007 he established Metro Bank, “when it had become clear people did not like their existing banks”. Since then customer trust in traditional banks has declined dramatically and mobile technology has all but taken over everyday lives.
The new venture will offer the full range of banking services, while striving to maintain real value and high standards of customer experiences. The retail side of the business will be the first to go online, with the business division to follow when the headquarters is fully operational.
“Business, particularly in the North-East, has been under-serviced by the banks,” Thomson said. “We want to bring a greater degree of digital banking to the business world than has been seen before. Helping SMEs is also at the forefront of what we are doing.”
Thomson said he was not worried about entering a potentially crowded market with the likes of Aldermore and Shawbrook building online banks targeting SMEs, and Virgin Money and Tesco Bank both in the process of launching online current accounts — “There are 46m current accounts out there and estimates say that between three-million and-five million of those will switch in the next 12 months.”
Atom will take advantage of the Prudential Regulation Authority’s fast-track licensing regime which helps challenger banks to come to market. The Newcastle-raised Thomson said Mullen — who became chief executive of HSBC’s online and telephone bank First Direct in 2011 — was the obvious man to pilot the new venture. “I first started talking to him about joining me about a year ago,” added Thomson. “I was impressed at how much he obviously knows about running a customer-focused bank.” Mullen resigned from his HSBC post two weeks ago.
And there will be no shortage of funding, adds Atom’s founder: “We have the funds we need to build the bank and then we will have the regulatory capital when we are granted a banking licence.” He refused to name the individuals and institutions who have already pledged launch capital.
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