Clearing banks rarely make headlines, but the Bank of London is one of only six authorised in the UK, and the first with a cloud-native platform designed for modern payments, clearing and settlement.

Its model breaks from tradition: the Bank doesn’t lend or leverage deposits, and instead provides real-time infrastructure built to support a wide range of financial services providers.

This week, we speak to Tony Bullman, chief financial officer, about the Bank’s growth since launch, what it’s doing differently and what’s next.

Tell us more about your company and its offering

As only the sixth authorised UK clearing bank, we offer a purpose-built payment, settlement and clearing platform that is powering the businesses and entrepreneurs of the future. The Bank of London has a distinct business model – unlike traditional banks, we do not lend, invest or leverage deposits, meaning clients’ money is always available on demand.

Our modern, cloud-native technology infrastructure represents a significant departure from traditional banking platforms, enabling us to offer enhanced efficiency, real-time processing capabilities and improved resilience. Our state-of-the-art platform supports key services like deposits-as-a-service and embedded banking, positioning the Bank as a leader in financial innovation.

What problem was your company set up to solve?

The traditional payment, settlement and clearing ecosystem is slow, opaque, expensive and inflexible – especially when it comes to international fund flows and smaller clients. Incumbent providers of these services rely on dated, cumbersome technology infrastructure built for the pre-digital economy and which, when combined with limited competition, stifles innovation. The fintech and payment services sectors are amongst the most disadvantaged.

The Bank of London was launched to challenge the traditional banks and provide underserved clients access to faster, more secure and more flexible financial solutions. We eliminate the complexity of traditional banking by leveraging cutting-edge technology and removing legacy barriers, ensuring businesses can hold and move money effortlessly while staying focused on growth.

Since launch, how has your company evolved?

Having built a state-of-the-art platform in collaboration with SAP Fioneer, the Bank of London has moved at pace to roll out a comprehensive suite of services beyond clearing, payment and settlement, including
deposits-as-a-service and embedded banking. Following the successful sale of the Bank last year, we have put in place a new board and a top-tier executive leadership team with extensive knowledge and experience of the banking sector to execute on the significant opportunities for growth.

What has been the biggest challenge or most ‘tricky moment’ to overcome?

As with all ambitious, fast-growing businesses operating in the regulated space, balancing the need to move quickly with the imperative of moving safely is always a key consideration, and we had to overcome some well-documented challenges last year. Put simply, there were areas in which our governance and processes had not kept pace with the company’s development and growth. Since then, with significant financial backing from new ownership and with new leadership, the Bank has delivered a comprehensive transformation to ensure our foundations are ready to support the delivery of our growth objectives and to move the Bank to sustainable profitability.

What are your biggest achievements or ‘proudest moment’ so far?

Our single biggest achievement was the exit of mobilisation in February 2023 being licensed as a regulated deposit taking bank able to commence banking activities, thereby becoming only the sixth clearer for the GBP market. The ownership transition in the second half of 2024 evidenced strong belief in our strategy, vision and opportunities providing the capital needed to take the Bank to sustainable profitability.

How would you describe the culture of your company?

We are prioritising creating a culture that listens and learns. Staff engagement is front and centre of that, beginning with our new employee engagement workstream to better understand what our people need to thrive.

We know that fostering a client centric culture is going to be critical for the Bank of London to deliver on its potential to disrupt the wholesale banking market and we seek to achieve this by focusing on openness, collaboration and innovation, starting with the leadership team. Our hierarchy is flat as we understand that the best solutions can come from any part of the organisation, and it enables us to deliver in a fast-paced environment where speed of decision making is critical.”

What’s in store for the future?

We intend to expand our offer beyond our core GBP capability to include international payments and to offer clearing for USD and EUR. Beyond payments, we are focusing on the digital assets sector where we are perfectly placed to be an important enabler. Embedded banking is also a significant growth opportunity for the Bank as we empower businesses with smarter banking solutions that fuel ambition, remove friction and ensure financial safety and security.