Challenger bank Chetwood acquires core banking tech vendor Yobota

UK digital bank Chetwood Financial has acquired core banking provider Yobota. The two companies were founded alongside each other in 2016 and have the same shareholders, but developed as separate entities.

Chetwood buys core banking tech vendor Yobota

In addition to providing core banking software to Chetwood, Yobota also claims a handful of other clients, such as Fronted, a fintech start-up for renters.

Chetwood assures that Yobota’s customers and partners will be unaffected by the transition. “They will maintain strict client confidentiality, with sensitive information and IP protected,” it states.

Yobota will continue to operate as a separate brand under the Chetwood umbrella.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Yobota founder and CEO Ammar Akhtar is leaving; existing Yobota management will continue to run the company.

Andy Mielczarek, CEO and founder of Chetwood, says the team is “saying goodbye to Ammar with a heavy heart” and praises his “energy, experience and creativity”.

“The acquisition is set to bring greater value to investors as well as strengthen our existing Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) proposition,” Mielczarek explains.

Chetwood says it will be offering “a full end-to-end BaaS offering”, hosted in the cloud.

“In particular, non-financial services businesses will be able to embed finance without needing to develop credit and pricing capabilities, alongside proposition, decisioning, modelling and operations as optional services.”

Chetwood will also continue to operate its existing consumer-facing products: Wave, LiveLend, SmartSave and BetterBorrow.