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Former WorldPay chief to launch UK's first new clearing bank in 250 years

A new challenger bank is set to enter the UK market this Autumn and in the process become the first new clearing bank on these shores in 250 years.

ClearBank, which is helmed by Worldpay Founder Nick Ogden, is to announce at a press conference today alongside Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Simon Kirby, that it is on track to open its doors later this year after achieving full FCA regulation and authorisation.

The London-headquartered bank, which is operating a fully open, technology-led banking model, will help join the dots between the UK’s various payment schemes and give financial service providers and FinTech firms access to services to support their current account capabilities and products.

Utilising public and private cloud infrastructure, the firm, which is styling itself as the ‘bank for banks’, said that thanks to its open access to transaction services, other companies and institutions will be able to offer payment and transactional processes in a much more cost-effective manner.

Outlining his vision for the new bank, Ogden, said: “There are thousands of new fintech startups and challenger banks improving choice, but the industry will never truly move forward while it’s constrained by the challenges of legacy operational structures.

“ClearBank was built specifically to create competition and aims to change the market dynamics radically. Figures from the Cruickshank Report indicate that, with the improved efficiency delivered by ClearBank’s built-for-purpose technology, between £2bn and £3bn could be saved from the annual costs that are paid for transactional banking in the UK.”

Currently, the UK has four main clearing banks in Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland, who move many using UK payment schemes such as Bacs and Faster Payments.

In becoming the fifth such clearing bank, ClearBank claims that it will offer a ‘truly neutral’ and independent banking service due to the fact that it will not offer its services directly to customers.

Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Simon Kirby MP, said the new bank would help the UK financial services market remain one of the most ‘competitive’ and ‘innovative’ in the world which is why the treasury was ‘creating the right environment for new banks to enter the market’.

“That is why I am so pleased to see ClearBank launch today,” Kirby said. “[I]t will play an important role helping challenger banks access the services they need to do business, so they can compete effectively with the big players and deliver the benefits of greater choice and value for consumers and businesses.”

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