Monthly Archives: July 2020

High-Street Bank Offers Dog Treats And Digital Enhancement

Metro Bank’s arrival on the UK scene ten years ago was a breath of fresh air. Branch-based, people-focused, and even dog-friendly (water bowls and treats in branches), Metro was… retro, and pleasingly so. Now, however, the Twenty-First Century has caught up with the bank, which is looking to enhance its digital offerings. Our friends at […]

FCA New Register Seeks To Limit Financial Harm

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has attracted a lot of criticism for its oversight (or alleged lack thereof) of financial marketing. The investors in the failed London Capital & Finance (LCF) are rightly incandescent with rage at the loss of so much of their money – and much of the investors’ ire has been directed […]

A Touch Of (AltFi) Frost: New Manchester FinTech

Mainstream finance has spent a long time coming in the direction of altfi. Now the traffic is definitely two-way. AltFi reports an innovation from a Manchester-based lawyer, who’s heading for the banking space: The founder of a Manchester-based law firm is gearing up for a rollout of a digital bank next year, after the law […]

FinTech Big Dogs Are Better Than Unicorns

We’re not sure whether the FinTech sector can be said to have big dogs. There are unicorns aplenty, with billion-dollar valuations formulated in the fertile imaginations of venture capitalists. Big dogs, however, are real businesses, operating in a real business environment. If there is a UK FinTech big dog, we’d say challenger bank Revolut was […]

FinTechs And Furloughs: Business As Usual Beckons (For Some)

One of our favourite media epithets is “tight-lipped”, a synonym for “no comment”. Our friends at AltFi showcase a fine example: UK fintechs are remaining tight-lipped on whether they will take up the government’s offer of thousands of pounds for returning furloughed workers to their jobs. The government’s job retention bonus scheme pays businesses £1,000 for […]

SME Loan Credit Quality Hit By Pandemic

Here’s a tour of our horizon. Money&Co. CEO, Nicola Horlick, explains the future as she sees it to our friends at P2P Finance News: The coronavirus crunch has made it harder to find small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) loans that are “safe options” for peer-to-peer investors, Money&Co founder Nicola Horlick has said. Horlick, known as […]

Covid Necessities Mother AltFi Invention

The pandemic has certainly been an agent for change. The need to adapt strategy and business direction has become a matter of survival for both mainstream and alternative financial sectors. The inventiveness, mothered by necessity, may even see one of the oldest and best-established direct lending platforms morph into an altogether different type of financial […]