Adam Smith

Starling pushes updates 5 times a day. Most banks? Once a week if they're lucky. Starling Bank, Revolut, Monzo Bank - all claim "modern tech." But here's what separates the winners from the rest. Here's how (see diagram) 1 - They accept small delays. The most data can be slightly out of sync. But when you tap your card at checkout? Exact balance instantly. Smart trade-off. 2 - Auto-healing system every 5 minutes, the scheduler (bottom right) automatically retries anything that failed. No engineers fixing things at 3am. It just fixes itself. 3 - Any server can crash without drama each of those ~20 microservices can die and restart instantly. This is why Chime, N26, and Nubank stay online 99.9% of the time. 4 - They Skip the "Cool Kid" Tech Controversial: While Wise and Stripe use complex tools everyone talks about, Starling uses simpler, custom-built stuff. My question is if they want to expand globally like Revolut, will they need to rebuild everything?

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A good example of why mutuals matter - and Nationwide Building Society getting it right. I often get the feedback when I raise concerns about the state of #Member governance at #Nationwide that I can always "vote with my feet" and take my business elsewhere. But to me this misses the point - everyone in the #UK is better off when you have a #mutual behaving like a mutual, i.e. putting customers first, and, for example, pricing better than the #competition. Walking across the street to a bank branch (if there's still one in your town) - or, more likely, downloading a different app - is weakening competition between the mutual-owned and shareholder-owned sectors. #Pricing products competitively and transparently is where building societies should excel. Their customers are their owners after all. Sometimes #BuildingSocieties (their raison d'être) are the most competitive mortgage providers - but not consistently so. Ditto savings rates. It’s the lack of consistency that many Members find frustrating and difficult to reconcile with a mutual ethos. Too much of retail banking is built, sadly, on customer ignorance and lethargy. Challenger brands, and potentially the rise of Open Banking - particularly as a layer for information gathering on pricing, etc. and recommendations to reduce switching costs - are likely to change that. Well done Kristo Käärmann, Cian Weeresinghe and the wider team at Wise for building this Transparency Rating and continuing to shine a spotlight on poor practices in #CrossBorder #payments.

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💼 𝐂𝐚𝐧 Monzo Bank 𝐰𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧’𝐬 𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲? For decades, UK banks treated small businesses like background noise. Long queues, slow credit, no flexibility. Meanwhile, 5.7 million private businesses were generating 60% of employment and half of the country’s turnover. The math never added up. ❗ Fast-forward to 2025. 1 𝐢𝐧 5 𝐒𝐌𝐄𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠, and 83% of brokers admit the high-street banks have “limited appetite” - which is corporate for “we gave up.” The Big Four’s grip on SME lending has crashed from 90% to 40%. The rest? Snapped up by challenger banks with better UX and fewer meetings. Enter Monzo Bank. After turning retail banking into a lifestyle app, Monzo is now targeting the most neglected corner of finance: small business banking. 𝐈𝐭’𝐬 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐚𝐟é𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐚 𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐧 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧. This infographic sums it up. Challenger banks now handle 60% of SME lending, and Monzo plans to double down with the same precision it brought to consumers: seamless credit, built-in accounting, instant insights, and interfaces that don’t make you cry. Monzo is not entering a niche. It’s entering the backbone of the UK economy. ________________________ 📊 Read the full story: Retail Darling to Business Powerhouse: Monzo’s Strategic Expansion into SME Banking 👉 https://lnkd.in/g9RGnUC3 #SMEs #Monzo #UK

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