ATB Financial looks on Brightside with new challenger bank
Canada’s ATB Financial wants to bring sunshine to the world of fintech with its very own digital challenger bank.
♫ Open up my eager eyes, ‘Cause I’m Mr. Brightside ♫
Called Brightside, it is still being built and is calling for early sign-ups. There is no exact data for launch.
Curtis Stange, ATB president and CEO, says: “We’ve been listening to Albertans and we are hearing there is a growing need to offer a new type of digital banking experience to complement all the great things we are doing at ATB Financial.”
There are a few details as to what the digital entity will offer.
It will offer automatic round-ups to let users save and provide automated transfers for savers.
FinTech Futures contacted Brightside for more details and the firm says it has partnered with Technisys to build an entirely new tech stack for Brightside, to be delivered in the cloud. Technisys will supply its Cyberbank Core and Cyberbank Digital solutions (ATB itself is a major user of SAP’s systems for core banking.)
This is the first deal for Technisys in Canada and was won as a result of a competitive tender, which featured the established providers (such as Temenos and the incumbent SAP) as well as challengers (such as Thought Machine, Fidor and Mambu). Technisys tells FinTech Futures this is its third deal in North America (as it already has two clients in the US).
In terms of sign-ups, Brightside says: “We would like to have a few thousand Albertans, who are interested in being among the first to try Brightside as part of our soft launch phase.”
It’s a “couple of months out” from its soft launch or beta phase and is targeting Alberta only. It has about 125 staff, which includes a team from Technisys.
ATB is the largest financial institution based in Alberta. According to its website, it has assets of more than CA$51.9 billion ($39.1 billion), 5,300 staff, and 753,000 customers.
Good Technisys