ALLICA BANK

The future of business banking Looking ahead, Richard has ambitious plans for Allica Bank.“ Our key aim by 2027 is to achieve 10 % penetration of this established business segment in the UK,” he says.

“ We’ re about 3-4 % right now, so it would be significant growth, but we think that’ s quite possible with the trajectory we’ ve built over the last few years.”

To reach this goal, the bank is focusing on three key trends in SME financing. First is the aforementioned emphasis on productive lending.

Second is the integration of financial operations like spend management, accounts receivable and cashflow management directly into the bank account experience.

“ For our segment – maybe not for mid-market and enterprise, but for our segment – these services should be directly attached to the bank account. We don’ t think there’ s a scaled future for standalone services in that space.”

THE BANK HAS RAISED OVER £ 350M( US $ 451.2M) IN CAPITAL FROM INVESTORS INCLUDING TCV, ATALAYA, AND WARWICK

The third area is artificial intelligence( AI), particularly generative AI, though Richard approaches this with pragmatic caution. For Allica, the application of large language models to banking for established SMEs presents unique challenges.

“ Banking is a high-stakes environment where you need really high accuracy, and models are typically best suited to high volume situations. Established SMEs are a fairly complex segment with much lower volume than consumers,” he notes.

“ So I think it’ s going to look quite different to a sort of mass volume consumer non-banking application.”

Nevertheless, Richard is convinced that these technologies will drive significant change in how Allica serves its customers.

60 May 2025