focus: digital banking


IBS Journal October 2015


‘It’s like a safe with two keys. The bank has one and the customer has the other


– both must consent to access the data.’ Chris Gledhill, Secco


on its website, he was inspired to create an easier way to bank regardless of citizenship. The bank does not hold a commercial


licence, meaning that at this time it can’t offer credit or loans. Instead it hopes to offer low-rate international money trans- fers as well as the ability to hold a number of currencies in the same account. In-store transactions, the bank says, will be free of charge, but ATM services and transfers abroad will come with a charge of 50p.


Secco Bank


The pre-licence bank – Secco – is also basing its strategy around a mobile and digital offering. Not pulling any punches, Secco claims


that high street banks are ‘broken’, ‘greedy’ and too profit driven. Banks, it claims, have failed to keep up with their customers’ lives and ‘have lost their way’. Headed up by CEO Chris Gledhill, a for-


mer Lloyds innovation technologist with a background in software development at TCS, Accenture and the Department of Work and Pensions, Secco aims to allow customers to send and receive payments via a messaging service. Unlike other digital-only banks, Secco


wants to do away with banking apps as well as branches. It hopes that its users will be able to exchange data as well as curren- cy via ‘payloads’ rather than ‘payments’. For example, it says, a customer can exchange a ‘Facebook like and a tip’ for a busker’s song or pay for their lunch and receive a recipe in return. At the heart of this messaging system


will be a location-based financial social net- work, named Aura. Secco describes its systems as a reverse


cloud, where the data is stored and owned by the customer on their devices, as well as by the bank. ‘It’s like a safe with two keys,’ Gledhill says. ‘The bank has one and


the customer has the other – both must consent to access the data.’ It is currently unknown if Secco is


actively looking for a third party core system or whether it is looking to build its own.


Tandem Bank


Tandem Bank is looking to attract mo- bile-savvy clients with its customer account and mortgage offerings. The project is formerly known as OpenBank. The bank is being set up by the co-founder


of transfer service Azimo, Ricky Knox, and Matt Cooper, a former director at Capital One. Tandem is hoping to receive its provi-


sional licence before the start of 2016. Mobile apps are fast becoming one of the most popular ways to bank with customers, according to research company Caci, access- ing their balances through approximately 895 million times on their smartphones in 2015. Tandem is understood to have raised


approximately £100 million in capital from a group of institutional investors. According to Knox, the aim is to help people manage their money rather than focus on direct product sales. Tandem plans to utilise big data to create bespoke offerings for its potential clientele. Knox plans for Tandem to have a ‘brick


and mortar’ call centre to deal with cus- tomer queries and transactions. Mobile, he says, will be Tandem’s primary banking channel, while the call centre will operate as a hub for far larger transactions. Tandem will, according to Knox, never


be for the customer who wants branch bank- ing. Not having legacy issues and older IT systems, he says, will enable Tandem to offer cost savings direct to its customers. The bank reportedly surveyed its options in regards to a core system, including looking at FIS, Fiserv and Temenos (incidentally, all three can be put in the ‘older IT systems’ category).


© IBS Intelligence 2015


Atom Bank, which is ahead of the game given that its restricted licence is to be lifted, will soon be able to fully open for business. Its back office processing is based on FIS’s Profile core banking system.


Civilised Bank, meanwhile, is waiting for authorisation and hopes to provide business current accounts with deposits, transaction banking, overdrafts, FX, investments, savings and loans. It has become the first taker of


the ‘bank in a box’ service, under- pinned by the FMS.next core banking system from Greek vendor, Profile, and delivered by a UK-based consultancy firm, Tusmor.


Lintel Bank is looking to tap into the banking needs of foreign students in the UK.


Mondo is hoping to have a full launch in the UK in 2016 and plans to focus on current accounts and short to medium term lending. It has built its own core banking system.


Starling Bank (which lost most of its key people to Mondo) ambitiously said it was targeting ‘millions of users’ when it arrived on the scene in 2014.


Other new players in the UK mobile banking space


www.ibsintelligence.com


41


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60