SCALING: BUILT TO CHANGE
Fast andFlexible The UK’s Tandem completed a core transformation last year with composable banking technology provider Mambu. Here, Tandem’s Chief Operating Officer Nick Bennett and Mambu’s Chief Customer Officer Elliott Limb share their thoughts on delivery-led culture, the innovation ecosystem and why not even neos can afford to stand still Digital challenger, Tandem, entered the UK market in 2016, promising a new approach to banking. Targeting the gig economy’s younger demographic with app-based money management tools, including an account aggregator and budgeting overview, it later added a cashback credit card and generous savings products. Among the early cohort of neobanks, combining mobile-only open banking functionality with deposit and lending facilities was an unusual approach. But
Tandem’s uncomplicated, fresh offer and simple user interface quickly attracted 950,000 customers. Five years is a long time in fintech, however. Customer expectations, rival challengers and, indeed, the economy, have moved on dramatically. And, last year, Tandem began to adapt accordingly: it decided to dump the credit card, acquired green lender Allium Lending Group to offer new green savings and home loan products, appointing Allium’s CEO as its chief commercial officer… and moved away from Fiserve’s Agiliti core banking platform to adopt a Cloud-based, software-as-a-service model. By striking a new partnership with composable banking provider Mambu, the aim is to shift the bank from being largely a consumer of technology services, to being an innovator in its own right, as Tandem repositions itself as ‘second wave’ challenger and ‘the good green bank’. In a recent global webinar, hosted by The Fintech Magazine, Nick Bennett, chief operating officer for Tandem Bank and Elliott Limb, chief customer officer at Mambu, discussed how the right processes, technology and people can help to prioritise an innovation and delivery-led culture, and enable an integrated ecosystem to operate with a contemporary mindset. It was the first time the two companies had talked publicly together about the new partnership.
For Bennett, whose consulting and banking background has largely been focussed on taking companies through the scale-to-growth phase, Tandem ticks all the necessary boxes because it’s focussed, as Bennett describes it, on ‘doing something different… thinking about how you solve financial problems, how you manage finances from a consumer point of view, rather than from a bank perspective; and driving a service-based approach to banking, as opposed to the product-based approach many banks have’. Investors, who supported an additional £60million fundraise last spring, obviously agree. Meanwhile, Mambu’s platform vision of composable banking means clients develop the banking experience best suited for them and their customers, without being tied to a specific vendor, product or technology. Unsurprisingly, Tandem ticks the necessary boxes for Elliott Limb, too. “This is a radical innovation, and we want to be there for the journey, at the core of it,” he says. ‘Business-as-usual’ in banking would be fine, according to Bennett, if it was working and meeting the needs of consumers. “I think it’s quite evident, though, when you look at how other sectors are being disrupted, that financial services is one of the last bastions of the industry still holding out.
Off to a good start: In Mambu, Tandem found a technology that could keep up with its ideas
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Issue 19 | TheFintechMagazine
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