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As its challenger bank rivals gear up for launch, Tandem has had to cut staff numbers

Digital-only challenger bank Tandem has had to trim down its team after a funding round fell through earlier this year.

The London-based startup has reduced headcount by around 30 staff according to Business Insider, a figure which includes redundancies as well as contractors who have not been kept on.

Tandem was forced to restructure its business after the £35m investment pledged by House of Fraser in December fell afoul of Beijing’s capital flight rules, which meant House of Fraser’s Chinese owners, Sanpower, were unable to honour the funding round. According to the report, Tandem only seen £6m of the £35m.

Co-Founder Ricky Knox said to BI that many of the contractors being let go were a result of the need to get hands on board to get its digital product out of the door.

He said: “I think these businesses should be running with a 50-100 person staff base and pre-Christmas we’d gone over that.

“We’ve restructured the team, moving from build to operate. We’ve been mainly a tech dev house for the last few years and through this year we’ve been building up and adding actually operational personnel. There’s been quite a bit of shift over the course of the last 6 months. It’s definitely not a one-way street.”

The Clerkenwell-based tech firm is now believed to be hunting for further investment to plug the gap left by House of Fraser’s withdrawal; however, the bank still plans to launch its credit card product within months.

It comes at a crunch time for many digital-only challengers as Tandem’s rivals gear up for their full launch. Starling Bank began rolling out its beta current account in March while fellow buzzy bank Monzo raised £22m earlier in the year as it closes in on its full launch.

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