B-North, the Manchester-based firm which is building its SME lending bank in UK revealed in its latest update that it has partnered with Leeds based RegTech innovator, TruNarrative – a firm well known for its SaaS KYC & AML solutions to provide its clients with access to best full suite of onboarding and compliance technology available in industry today thereby facilitating B-North with ability to deliver crucial business lending services which are ten times faster than large incumbents. The RegTech specialists’ platform capabilities will be added to B-North’s curated set of technology stack providers which includes core banking from Mambu and loan originations workflow from nCino.
B-North was established in 2018 by a team of former senior level executives from Atom Bank, Metrobank, First Direct and Santander. The team aims to challenge the current SME lending landscape by offering mid-to-high value loans with the face-to-face experience of a traditional bank and the speed and efficiency of a modern FinTech lender. Once launched post obtaining a banking license, the firm will grant loans ranging between £500k and £5million with a business structure that is designed to deliver secured loans to SMEs in as little as 10 days via delivery of capital to businesses 10x faster than what’s currently available in rival banks and lenders. Given the fact that TruNarrative’s platform and services are trusted around the globe across wide range of financial service provider, B-North will be able to deliver lending products at much rapid rate while remaining fully complaint to current market standards.
To achieve its aim and goals, B-North is required to make rapid, high-value lending decisions central to their overall proposition and to this end, the firm began searching for solutions that facilitate low-friction customer journeys whilst maintaining the highest levels of compliance and risk mitigation in the market and ultimately deciding upon TruNarrative. The partnership gives B-North full access to the TruNarrative solution and its capabilities such as customer onboarding, identity verification, account monitoring, payment screening, transactional risk and ongoing risk monitoring of customers. The RegTech specialist’s platform will be integrated with B-North’s core banking platform and front-end systems paving way for a seamless experience for B-North employees, direct customers, commercial finance brokers and intermediaries. TruNarrative will perform regular checks and monitoring against involved corporate entities, their directors and associated third parties, providing the SME lender with a single customer view when making compliance decisions.
Via TruNarrative interface, B-North will also gain access to a full case management system for manual review and referrals, a natural language rule builder. This will allow the firm to accommodate rapid strategy changes and facilitate comprehensive audit trail for instant recall of all data for regulatory purposes.
The SME Lender has raised over £7m in seed capital till date having surpassed its crowd funding goal of £2 Million at the turn of the year. It is still continuing to raise funds to accumulate enough capital for supporting its bank licence and lending activities once its services are fully mobilised. The firm is currently working to officially launch its services in the second half of 2020 and tap into UK SME lending market valued at over £150 billion per year.
Commenting on this partnership, Edward Vaughan – Head of Banking, TruNarrative said “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”.
Speaking on same topic, Jonathan Thompson – CEO, B-North added “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 a 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”.
