Next year, another new digital bank is to launch in the UK.
It has whistled through regulatory clearance in just 18 months since founding, receiving in October an authorization with restrictions (AWR) banking licence from the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
It has already raised more than £20 million through seed capital and then a series-A funding round.
Monument, named after the tower that commemorates the great fire of London, is set to serve the customer segment that all the large UK banks used to tell Euromoney was their best hope for profits: those mass-affluent individuals whose needs range across savings, investments, insurance and various categories of lending.
We would rather do low-volume, high-value business
“We see between 3.5 million and maybe as many as 4.5 million customers in the UK with between £250,000 and £5 million in wealth,” Mintoo Bhandari, founder and chief executive, tells Euromoney. “But this segment of the market is now being vacated. The cost-to-income ratio does not work for high-street banks to deliver the service levels the mass-affluent customers expect and need.
“And
