OakNorth Bank

OakNorth Bank Limited^[1]

Type	Private limited company
Industry	Banking
Founded	2015 (2015) London, England
Founders	Rishi Khosla Joel Perlman
Headquarters	OakNorth Bank Limited Nightingale House 65 Curzon Street London W1J 8PE England
Key people	Lord Turner (Independent Advisor)[1] Cyrus Ardalan (Chairman)[1] Robert Burgess (Non-executive Director)[1] Lord Maude (Independent Adviser)[2] Graham Olive (Deputy CEO) Cristina Alba-Ochoa (CFO) Navtej S. Nandra (Non-executive Director) Ted Berk (Non-executive Director)
Products	Business Loans Property Development Finance Deposits
Number of employees	130+(2017)
Website	www.oaknorth.com,www.oaknorth.in

OakNorth is a UK bank that lends between £500,000 to £20m to small and mid-sized growth businesses, entrepreneurs and property developers.^{[3][4][5][6][7]}

The bank, which gained regulatory approval in early 2015,^[8][9] was borne out of the negative experiences its founders - Rishi Khosla and Joel Perlman - had in trying to secure growth capital for their previous venture, Copal Amba.^[10][11]

History

OakNorth secured a full banking licence from the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in March 2015 and began deposit taking and lending six months later.^[12][13]

The Board is chaired by Cyrus Ardalan, former vice-Chairman of public policy and government relations at Barclays Bank; and includes the former president of online brokerage E*TRADE, Navtej Nandra, and Edward “Ted” Berk, a faculty member at Harvard Business School, and an ex-managing director of Bain Capital^[14][15][16].

Lord Francis Maude, former Minister for the Cabinet Office and former Minister for Trade and Investment, joined the bank as an independent adviser in September 2016.^{[17][18][19][20][21]} Lord Adair Turner, the former Chairman of the Financial Services Authority (now the Financial Conduct Authority) is also on the bank's advisory board^[22].

Indiabulls Housing Finance, India’s largest non-bank lender to small and mid-sized companies,^[23] invested £66 million in OakNorth Bank in November 2015, which increased the bank’s capital base to £85 million.^[24][25]

In May 2016, OakNorth became the first bank in the UK to have its core system fully hosted on the cloud after working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to drive the development forward with the regulator.^{[26][27][28][29]}

In August 2016, just eleven months after launching, the bank announced that it had broken even.^{[30][31][32][33][34][35][36]}

In May 2017, the bank was named on The Leap 100: a list of the UK's fastest-growing businesses^[37][38][39] and as one of 17 UK fintech businesses that could one day be worth $1bn^[40][41].

Operations

The bank provides £500,000-£20m business loans, property development finance, and property investment loans, as well as a range of savings accounts. The bank considers stock, debtors, fixtures and fittings, plant and machinery, intellectual property, and real estate as collateral.^{[42][43][44][45][46]}

It has offices in London, Manchester^{[47][48][49][50]} and New Delhi.^[51]

Awards and recognition

• RESI Awards 2017: Residential Financier of the Year (won - 2017)^[52][53][54]
• Celent Model Bank Awards: Banking in the Cloud (won - 2017)^[55]
• National Technology Awards: Cloud Innovation of the Year (won - 2017)^[56][57]
• FStech Awards: Cloud Computing Innovation of the Year (Highly Commended - 2017)^[58]
• The PROPS Awards: Property Lender of the Year (shortlisted - 2017)^[59]
• FStech Awards: Digital Launch of the Year (shortlisted - 2017)^[60]
• B&C Awards: Specialist Bank of the Year (shortlisted - 2017)^[61]
• High Potential Business Awards: Fast-growth Champion of the Year (won - 2016)^[62][63]
• UK Cloud Awards: Best Private Sector Project SMB (shortlisted - 2016)^[64]
• British Small Business Awards: Finance Provider of the Year (shortlisted - 2016)^[65]

References