B-North, the Manchester-based firm building an SME lending bank for the UK, has selected Mambu, the SaaS banking engine, to provide its core banking technology. Mambu and nCino will collaborate to integrate Mambu’s core banking engine with nCino’s cloud-based market-leading loan and deposit origination platform. Delivering the first seamless deployment of both providers’ solutions for business lending.

This platform will allow B-North to process loans at speed and deliver an efficient service to its SME customers. It will future-proof B-North’s infrastructure, reducing the time required for further development and also deliver B-North with data insights.

This strategic integration further underpins the development of B-North’s proposition and marks another milestone for B-North’s cloud-based banking service, which combines technology with experienced regional lending teams  based in  pods – the first of which is due to open in Manchester next year.

This localised, technology-enabled model is designed to allow loans to be made available to SMEs in as little as 10 working days.  Typically, traditional banks process loans centrally across different department, a process that can take months to complete.

SMEs make up the vast majority of the UK economy, accounting for 99% of UK businesses and employing over 16 million people - 60% of all private sector employment in the UK.

"This three-way relationship neatly highlights our fintech-enabled model," Jonathan Thompson, B-North co-founder and CEO, said. "B-North unlocks real benefits by harnessing the best technologies and combining them with our unique regional origination approach. We aim to facilitate SME lending, with market-leading technology and lead times, and to give our customers the best of the traditional and the modern. We look forward to building our relationship with Mambu and nCino to deliver maximum benefit to our future customers."

Ewan Hutton, B-North CTO, commented: "The advantage of creating a new bank without legacy systems or legacy business processes is we can design the solution around our customer’s needs and leverage the very best cloud-based technology. Mambu have already proved their engineering capabilities with their core banking solution in the marketplace and for B-North it is a perfect fit versus traditional solutions that are over-engineered legacy designs with recent front-end face-lifts."

Eugene Danilkis, Mambu CEO, said: "Mambu is committed to enabling access to modern financial services for all. The UK SME sector hold significant potential for growth and we see that B-North has a wealth of first-hand experience in this sector and are building a business with the needs of SMEs in mind. Together with nCino and B-North, our technology will enable SME borrowers to obtain lending in a fraction of the time it currently takes, meaning business owners will have more time to do what matters - developing their businesses - without having the long wait for funding."

"B-North is taking a progressive approach to its technology strategy," Jacqui Morcombe, nCino area vice president, commented. "By building a foundational cloud-based architecture - with nCino and Mambu at the centre - B-North is establishing itself as a customer-centric institution keen on delivering exceptional new services to SMEs quickly and without the constraints of inflexible systems as market pressures shift. Not only will this operating model provide a true competitive advantage, B-North will be able to better meet regulatory demands for greater transparency and nimbly address evolving standards for customer service and delivery."