Tide - Business Banking

BUSINESS BANKING PROJECT PARTNER

B U S I N E S S I N T E RV I E W

DO WHAT YOU LOVE Tide is fast becoming the go-to banking platform for small and medium-sized enterprises, freeing up the time of business owners to enable them to focus on what they want to do.

CEO Oliver Prill tells us more.

Written by Anna McMahon • Produced by Tom Barnes

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Oliver Prill

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Oliver Prill, CEO of digital banking service for small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs), Tide, has over 20 years of leadership experience in financial services, having worked across both the banking and insurance sectors.

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liver was attracted to the role at Tide, having worked closely with many small business owners over the years, and having been inspired by their energy and passion. He explained, “When I was looking for my next move, I thought about the sector in financial services that had been particularly neglected.

I found that SMEs

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have been highly underserved by the traditional banks. Tide was a business that already had product-market fit in providing a far superior solution.

I am delighted that I took the opportunity when the CEO role came up.”

Tide became operational in January 2017, with the sole aim of offering financial services to SMEs, allowing them to run their businesses efficiently in today’s online/mobile environment. Oliver said, “Our business model is to provide a highly digital business current account, along with a broad range of additional services. If you think of a restauranteur or an IT consultant, they are very focused on driving their businesses forward. They really don’t want to be focused on

Tide currently has 10-12 per cent of the SME business current accounts in the UK

their banking and admin. We are different from traditional banks in that we don’t just offer a business current account, but we provide a platform for all banking and admin needs. You can write invoices on the platform, you can easily integrate with accounting software, and soon you will be able to do the payroll, so it’s much, much broader than just banking. We want to be the go-to place for all these needs.”

And Tide has exhibited huge appeal for a large number of SMEs, with almost 1.3 per cent of the market share of a total of 5.7million SMEs. Having been let down in the past by traditional banks, Oliver is dedicated to putting the owners of small and medium-sized businesses at the 7

“Our mission is to save our members time (and money), but the primary purpose of Tide is to make the banking and admin of their business an easy process, so they can have the time to do what they love�

Oliver Prill

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forefront of Tide’s agenda and fix small business banking for good. He said, “Traditionally, the big five banks dominated this market, and SMEs have never been very wellserved. Recent years have seen branch closures, and SMEs have been put into very clunky, hard-toreach service centres. From their point of view, they are desperate

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to access better banking services.

An SME is very different from a consumer – if they have time, they want to focus on their business. I speak to a lot of our members and they don’t spend days optimising their banking – they want to make their businesses better. They don’t want to spend much time on their banking and admin. Our mission is to save our members time (and money), but the primary purpose of Tide is to make the banking and admin of their business an easy process, so they can have the time to do what they love.”

In addition, SMEs face a multitude of banking challenges on a dayto-day basis. Oliver added, “The first challenge comes when you are starting out – it is very hard to get a

Meet the team

business current account. It takes weeks, sometimes months. Once you’ve secured a business current account, there’s another set of challenges. While most banks offer a degree of online banking, it is very clunky and hard to access, and it is particularly hard to get the data out of banking into an accounting system. All of this is very time-consuming. The admin side is not very well-integrated with the bank account, so a lot of our members would spend a Sunday afternoon doing their admin. When all the banking information is easily put into their accounting system, it saves time.”

Tide’s solution sets the company apart from its competitors, having been designed with the

“We provide a first-class service, which will become even better as we build our platform” Oliver Prill

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Harvir Sangha Founder of Doyenne

Tide Member

“Jumio has face recognition technology to verify that the applicant is the person that their ID card or identity document says that they are. It has become part of our application process now�

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SME specifically in mind. Oliver explained, “In a large bank, small business banking sits in the middle of consumer and corporate banking. They therefore don’t receive the resources. We only focus on SMEs, so every hour of the day is spent improving things for them.

We speak to our members to get their feedback, and we look at the data. This stream of continuous improvement for the SME is, we believe, our recipe for success, and the numbers bear it out.”

When the RBS Alternative Remedies Scheme was set up by the UK government, following its rescue of RBS during the financial crisis, £775million was placed into a fund in a bid to increase competition in the small business sector. Tide’s partner, ClearBank, applied for a grant, Tide partnering with them, and they went on to win one of the major awards. Oliver said, “ClearBank won £60million, and we partnered with them. This partnership will allow us to step change the build out of the Tide proposition.”

Tide currently has 10-12 per cent of the SME business current accounts in the UK, and every month, the company acquires close to 0.1 per cent of the market share of the

total SME market. Oliver believes the reason for this kind of traction is the fact that Tide’s proposition is entirely focused on SMEs. He added, “The future of the platform is very bright. We would argue that we are only about 10 per cent there. We have so many plans to bring it to the next level. We provide a first-class service, which will become even better as we build our platform.”

The company is partnering with a number of other organisations to help bring its plans into fruition, notably online mobile payments and identity verification company, Jumio, which provides card and ID scanning and validation products for mobile and web transactions.

Oliver said, “We have to check the identity of applicants. Jumio has face recognition technology to verify that the applicant is the person that their ID card or identity document says that they are. It has become part of our application process now.”

Not shy in using the latest technology to improve services for its members, Tide is well on its way towards domination of the SME banking scene.

For further information, visit our website

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hello@tide.co www.tide.co