Description
OakNorth Bank is a UK bank for scaling businesses (typically with between £1m–£100m in turnover) that provides loans and both business and personal savings accounts. The bank, which gained regulatory approval in early 2015, was founded by entrepreneurs Rishi Khosla and Joel Perlman, who had previously founded Copal Amba. The bank focuses on providing loans of £0.5m–£25m as well as savings accounts.
History
OakNorth Bank secured a full banking licence from the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in March 2015, and launched offering flexible debt financing and a range of savings accounts six months later in September 2015.
The Board is chaired by Cyrus Ardalan, former vice-chairman of public policy and government relations at Barclays Bank, and includes Harvard Business School faculty member and an ex-managing director of Bain Capital Edward “Ted” Berk and Robert Burgess. In February 2021, Rajesh Gupta, formerly CFO at Kensington Mortgages, joined OakNorth Bank as its CFO. OakNorth Bank also appointed Carolyn Schuetz, former Chief Operating Officer for Group Retail Banking at HSBC, and Timo Boldt, co-founder of Gousto, as Non-Executive Directors in July 2021 and August 2022 respectively.
Lord Adair Turner, the former Chairman of the Financial Services Authority (now the Financial Conduct Authority) joined the bank's advisory board in May 2017 after previously holding the role of senior independent advisor on the OakNorth Bank board from 2015. He was joined in October 2018 by Martin Stewart, the former Director of Banks, Building Societies & Credit Unions at the Bank of England. In January 2020, Philip Hammond, the former UK Chancellor, became the latest member to join OakNorth's advisory board.
In May 2016, OakNorth became the first bank to be fully hosted on the cloud after working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to drive the development forward with the regulator
In December 2021, OakNorth completed its first acquisition with a 100% takeover of accountancy cash flow provider, Fluidly. In October 2022, OakNorth Bank acquired a 50% stake in specialist property lenders ASK Partners, to deepen its support for UK housebuilders and property entrepreneurs.
In January 2023, OakNorth, alongside The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) and other Fintech firms, wrote to the former British Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Grant Shapps, calling on him to improve small businesses’ access to borrowing. The group warned that failure to do so could further damage the UK’s economic growth prospects.
In March 2023, OakNorth submitted a rescue bid for the UK arm of Silicon Valley Bank, being described in The Times as a “white knight”.
In April 2023, Sharon Miles was appointed as the Group Chief Operating Officer.
