After receiving all necessary approvals, BBVA has completed the £85.4m investment into Atom, announced in March this year. With this transaction, BBVA increases its stake in UK’s first bank built exclusively for smartphone or tablet to 39%. As well as from BBVA, Atom also secured capital from some other shareholders, bringing the total capital raised to £149m. The new capital being invested will allow Atom to continue its impressive growth, and support the uptake of new clients and build core capabilities.
Atom will also be looking to roll out new products and services in the future. Atom has demonstrated its ability to execute on its strategy, having secured a balance sheet of over £1.4bn in deposits and has lent over £1.2bn through residential mortgages and business loans in less than a year.
Atom’s strengths –its low operating costs, mobile-only model, high customer satisfaction and disruptive business model– have seen the company lead the disruption that digital banking is bringing to the UK financial services sector. In the future, the bank will be looking at how the positive impact of PSD2 and Open Banking can help it support its customers further in their financial decision making.
Commenting at the time the deal was initially announced, in March this year, BBVA CEO Carlos Torres Vila, said: “Atom is progressing extremely well and we continue to support the company”. “We are fully aligned with the vision of banking that Atom is pursuing, and the disruption it is already bringing to the UK financial services sector.”
The BBVA Group today has 24 million customers who operate through digital channels of whom 19.3 million do so using mobile devices. In 2018, the Group is aiming for digital customers to make up 50% of its client base on a global level and for 2019 the target is to have mobile customers making up 50% of the total.
Currently, one out of every three sales at BBVA is via digital channels and this figure is expected shortly to rise to one out of every two. “Only three years ago it was one out of 20”, says Eugenia Gibbons, the Global Head of Digital Sales and Customer Engagement BBVA.
After securing its banking license in June 2015, Atom bank launched operations in April 2016, offering market-leading Fixed Saver accounts and secured business lending for small and mediumsized enterprises (‘SMEs’). From the start, Atom set out to build a customer- driven bank, designed to meet their new needs and optimised for mobile technologies. Atom bank launched its first mobile mortgage product a year ago and has recently announced it has taken £1.3bn of deposits and has now lent £1.2bn to small businesses and homeowners.
Source: BBVA
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
