UK challenger Amicus applies for banking licence
And another one appears
Amicus Finance, a UK financial services group, has submitted a banking licence application to the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
It hopes to get the banking licence in 2017. In advance of authorisation, Amicus will convert £30 million of the debt currently used to fund its lending activities into equity and this will form the capital base of the bank’s operations.
John Jenkins, CEO of Amicus, says: “Becoming a bank will ensure we have the resources to grow, adapt and evolve our proposition in the market over the coming years.”
Amicus has also made changes to its senior management team by appointing David Fisher, Alex Shapland and Paul Stevens as non-executive directors to the board. Fisher is the former CEO of Sainsbury’s Bank, Shapland was previously a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Stevens is the former head of Investec Private Bank in the UK.
Amicus, formed in 2009, is a specialist lender providing short-term property loans, SME lending and working capital solutions. It is headquartered in London and operates nationally.
With so many new entrants trying to muscle into the UK banking sector, Banking Technology has put together a comprehensive list of the known challengers to date and the technology they are using.
