GB Bank receives full banking licence, set to lend £3bn over five years

GB Bank has become only the second UK bank to launch this year after receiving its full UK banking licence (the first one was Ashman Finance in June).

GB Bank receives full banking licence

The firm says it has committed to lend £3 billion over the next five years to support the creation of more than 100,000 jobs, 20,000 new homes and several million square feet of office space.

Its focus will be on secured property development loans of between £500,000 and £5 million, with 90% of lending going to regional property developers, businesses and construction companies.

GB Bank, which received its restricted banking licence in October 2021, will provide tailored property development loans with competitive fixed interest rates and is committed to using local professional advisors, encouraging local employment opportunities.

The Teesside Pension Fund (TPF) has agreed to invest up to £48 million to support the bank’s growth plans.

The firm will also offer a range of fixed-term saving products, with savings up to £85,000 protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). The funds will be directly linked to the local community developments.

GB Bank’s chief lending officer Neil Williams says: “Developers are facing numerous challenges such as increasing material costs, access to land and difficulty sourcing and retaining labour.

“We are helping by working with them to provide quick lending decisions to better enable them to commit to purchasing land, providing competitive fixed interest rates so they can more accurately calculate funding costs together with providing connections to a property ecosystem with local, professional advisors.”

The start-up’s first CEO, Steve Deutsch, spent 19 years at Lloyds Bank. He left in November 2020 to be replaced by former Barclays and Aldermore Bank veteran Sue Hayes as interim CEO. She, in turn, was replaced by Stephen Lancaster earlier this year.

He is the former CEO of Cascade, leading the build and launch of its cloud-native platform.

The bank also appointed former Monzo co-founder Paul Rippon as its non-executive chair in June 2020.