Middlesbrough-headquartered GB Bank has officially launched after receiving its full UK banking licence.
As reported last year, GB Bank grabbed a restricted banking licence for its plans in the property sector. With the full licence, banking matters have now moved up a gear.
Paul Rippon, Chairman of GB Bank, says: “GB Bank is only the second UK bank to launch this year, which demonstrates how incredibly challenging launching a bank is! The team deserves huge credit, and we are excited about what the future holds.”
The challenger bank says it is committed to lending £3 billion over five years. It reckons the funding will support the creation of over 100,000 jobs, 20,000 new homes and several million square feet of office space.
GB Bank will provide property development loans of between £500,000 and £5 million, and is targeting regional property developers, SMEs and construction companies.
Neil Williams, Chief Lending Officer at GB Bank, explains: “Developers are facing numerous challenges such as increasing material costs, access to land and difficulty sourcing and retaining labour. We are helping by working with them to provide quick lending decisions to better enable them to commit to purchasing land.”
The bank talks about how it will support communities, for example it will use local professional advisors, to try and encourage local employment opportunities.
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GB Bank points out that savings are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to £85,000, and the funds will be directly linked to the local community developments.
The Teesside Pension Fund is GB Bank’s “cornerstone” investor. It has invested £48 million to support the bank’s plans.
The tech aspects of getting a licence are not particularly strong, but earlier this year the bank chose TruNarrative to provide its suite of customer onboarding and transactional risk compliance capabilities.
Using TruNarrative, GB Bank can build a risk profile for each customer with risk visibility over applications, deposits, withdrawals and repayments.
GB Bank will have access to over 50 third-party data providers within the TruNarrative App Store.
TruNarrative will integrate with GB Bank’s technology stack, including core banking systems, front-end user interface and reporting framework. Back in October 2021, the bank went live on the nCino Bank Operating System.
