ALLICA BANK

as a technology-driven bank. Rather than periodic major releases, the focus is on continuous incremental enhancements that compound over time.

Each‘ squad’ owns a dedicated thread of development and is empowered to make decisions that benefit customers.

“ It’ s about decentralised progress as opposed to me saying,‘ let’ s do these three things’,” Richard notes.“ But the output of all that work should be that we achieved our company goals.”

This tech-first approach has enabled Allica to build a comprehensive suite of financial services for SMEs in record time.

“ From our initial secured-term lending product, we’ ve built out both lots more lending products but also current accounts and cards and various savings accounts. And we’ re increasingly pushing into adjacent financial operations categories like expense management or credit control,” Richard says.

The bank’ s financial offerings fall into two main categories. First is lending, which is focused on supporting business growth through financing new equipment, properties, or working capital needs.

ALLICA BANK CURRENTLY HAS ABOUT 3-4 % PENETRATION OF THEIR TARGET MARKET SEGMENT, WITH A GOAL TO REACH 10 % BY 2027

The second is payments and savings, where Allica aims to provide dramatically better value than traditional banks.

The value gap in SME banking Richard is particularly passionate about addressing what he sees as a significant value gap in SME banking services.

Traditional banks, he argues, have been extracting excessive fees from established businesses while providing subpar service and interest rates.

“ Established SMEs are getting gouged by the major banks,” Richard continues.

“ They’ re being charged monthly account fees, payment fees, card fees and typically receiving very low interest on savings accounts. We estimate there’ s about £ 9bn( US $ 11.6bn) per year that these businesses are missing out on.”

In contrast, Allica’ s business account – deliberately branded as the“ Business Rewards Account” – for its target customer profile features no account fees, no payment fees, highly competitive interest rates and cashback on card spending.

This value-based approach has helped drive Allica’ s rapid growth in the market.

Productive lending for economic growth For Richard, a critical focus area is what he terms“ productive lending” – financing that helps businesses invest, grow and become more productive, rather than simply recycling existing assets.

“ There’ s been a substantial dropoff in productive business lending over the last 15 years,” Richard says.“ There’ s a lot of lending that recycles existing

56 May 2025