Allica Bank, ClearBank, Monument Bank, Nottingham Building Society, OakNorth Bank and Zopa Bank have been selected as the first firms to join the Bank of England and Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) new Scale‑up Unit.
The Scale‑up Unit, announced last year, is intended to strengthen engagement between regulators and high‑growth firms by providing tailored support as they develop new products, attract new customers and enter new markets. The Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) and FCA officials will meet with the cohort individually and collectively over the coming months, with the aim of improving regulatory processes and deepening supervisors’ understanding of the challenges scaling firms face.
Charlotte Gerken, Executive Director for UK Deposit Takers at the PRA, said welcoming the first cohort was an important milestone.
“It shows our commitment to helping firms grow in a sustainable way that benefits the financial services sector and wider economic growth,” Gerken.
Jessica Rusu, Chief Data, Information and Intelligence Officer at the FCA, added that the move would help the agency deliver on its “strategy to support growth and UK competitiveness”.
“Our joint Scale-Up Unit enhances the support available to firms as they move from start-up to scale up, helping them to grow successfully and sustainably,” she said.
The firms selected for the first cohort all publicly welcomed the initiative.
Richard Davies, CEO of Allica Bank, said the unit “should provide banks like Allica with more capital certainty and more regulatory support to boost lending to the established SMEs that power the UK’s real economy.” He said the programme, “done well,” could support the government’s ambition to make the UK “the location of choice for financial services firms to invest, innovate and grow.”
Rishi Khosla, CEO and co‑founder of OakNorth, said noted that tailored regulatory support would help OakNorth “better deliver on [its] mission” to empower scaling mid‑market businesses.
“Having already lent over $21bn to these businesses, supporting the creation of tens of thousands of jobs and homes, we’re delighted to work closely with regulators to build an even stronger platform for sustainable growth,” he said.
The Scale‑up Unit builds on and complements existing support structures, including the New Bank and Insurer Start‑up Units, the Regulatory Sandbox, the Early and High Growth Oversight function, the Pre‑Application Support Service and the AI Lab. It also aligns with wider regulatory reforms such as Basel 3.1 implementation, Solvency UK, the Strong and Simple framework and changes to the Senior Managers Regime.
Expressions of interest for a second cohort will open later this year. The Unit is also available to smaller, fast‑growing insurers on an ongoing basis, while the FCA plans to launch a solo‑regulated Scale‑up cohort in the spring to extend support to firms across a broader range of sectors.
