B-North, the Manchester-based firm building an SME lending bank for the UK, has TruNarrative to provide a full suite of customer onboarding and compliance capabilities that will enable B-North to deliver business lending. Its lending procedure is said to be up to 10x faster than large incumbents.
The Leeds based RegTech platform will be added to B-North’s technology stack providers, which includes core banking from Mambu and loan origination workflow from nCino. The TruNarrative platform will deliver customer onboarding, robust compliance and financial crime prevention, a single risk view through the implementation of strong ID & biometric verification, risk assessments, business credit insights, multi-bureau eKYC, PEPs, Sanctions, and Adverse Media. B-North will now be able to compliantly deliver their lending products to its target customers from a range of industries, including banking, lending, eCommerce, and payment services.
B-North is an SME lending bank in the UK which grants loans of between £500k and £5million in as little as 10 days, which is up to 10 times faster than incumbent banks and lenders. It is led by a team of former senior leaders from Atom Bank, Metrobank, First Direct, and Santander, with the aim of challenging the SME lending landscape, offering mid-to-high value loans with the speed and efficiency of a modern FinTech lender while maintaining the face-to-face experience of a traditional bank. The UK SME lending market is valued at over £150 billion per year and B-North will operate regional ‘Lending Pods’ of underwriters, valuers, and expert lending bankers across the UK.
TruNarrative’s platform features customer onboarding, identity verification, account monitoring, payment screening, transactional risk, and ongoing risk monitoring of customers. It will integrate with B-North’s core banking platform and front-end systems. B-North will also have access to a full case management system for manual review and referrals, a natural language rule builder allowing for rapid strategy changes, and a comprehensive audit trail for instant recall of all data for regulatory purposes.
Edward Vaughan, Head of Banking at TruNarrative, commented: “TruNarrative has been working with B-North since early 2019 and I am delighted that they will be becoming one of our newest customers. B-North are true innovators in the SME lending space and are backed by an exceptional and highly experienced team.”
Jonathan Thompson, Chief Executive Officer at B-North, said: “B-North unlocks real benefits for businesses by harnessing the best technologies and combining them with our unique regional approach. TruNarrative is a key partner for us in building our tech-focused bank and will be instrumental in helping us deliver fast, informed lending decisions whilst ensuring the highest levels of compliance and smooth customer experience. We aim to facilitate SME lending with market-leading technology and lead times, and to give our customers the best of the traditional and the modern.”
B-North is currently fundraising to raise capital which will underpin its bank license and support its lending activities during mobilization, due to begin in the second half of 2020. The firm has recently surpassed its crowd fundraising goal of £2m at the turn of the year and has raised over £7m in seed capital to date.
