THE CLOUD: WHEN AND WHERE
For most banks, it’s a case of how, not if, they will adopt Cloud technology. We asked senior execs from NatWest’s Mettle, open banking-driven startup Mojo Mortgages and Cloud services provider Hyve what difference it can make The battle for business facing banks has never been more intense than it is now. Speed of innovation is a key driver in a sector where digital challengers have dramatically ripped up the traditional landscape for so long dominated by incumbent, heavyweight institutions. And, if tech now defines success, then the Cloud and how chief technology officers deploy it, is probably the single most influential contributor – potentially levelling the playing field between legacy operators and agile newcomers and redrawing the CTO’s job spec in the process. First, though, legacy banks must be sure they’re picking the right fight; deciding when to square up to challengers has
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TheFintechMagazine | Issue 22
become a crucial factor in a winning or losing strategy. UK banking giant NatWest Group has recently experienced both sides of that particular coin. In May 2020, the group, then known as the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, closed its digital retail bank Bó only six months after a high-profile launch in which it directly pitted itself against successful neobanks such as Monzo, Starling and Revolut... and came up short. By contrast, NatWest’s speedboat SME digital business bank Mettle has proved a hit since its low-key debut in 2019. It’s grown to 250-plus employees, some of whom were incorporated from Bó following its demise, and it’s now grown up enough to appoint its first culture and people boss, to promote initiatives such as hybrid working. Wayne Freeman, Mettle’s CTO, says its success was made possible by the fact the startup got its target market right from the get-go. And that market was the ‘passion economy’ – the small business entrepreneurs, freelancers and sole traders, fuelled by dreams of independence, and many seeking an alternative to the tired economic models and ways of working the pandemic has shot holes in.
“Mettle is built for members of the growing passion economy and we’re seeing more and more of those” says Freeman. Sitting, as it does, inside NatWest’s innovation arm gives the spinoff bank the best of both worlds. “We attempt to operate like a startup, with our ways of working and our structure, but we leverage the very best elements of being part of the NatWest experience,” says Freeman. “Particularly at Mettle, the customer is at the centre of everything we do, and we serve their needs through technology, whether that’s apps, websites or the services they support. In order to deliver those experiences, I have to work very closely with the chief product officer, the chief operations officer and the chief marketing officer at Mettle, and I think our teams actually, culturally, are much more entwined. “Product and engineering are matrixed – they work together – and they both own the customer experience, the features we’re building, all of the strengthening and hardening, the security, privacy, resilience and scalability considerations, as well. Those things together are extremely important.” Chris Thacker, until recently CTO at www.fintechf.com
