Crown Agents Bank (CAB), the FX and payments business which connects hard-to-reach markets to the global economy, is pleased to announce its financial results for the year ended 31 December 2022. Partnering with banks, fintechs, governments, central banks and international development organisations, the business has delivered a strong increase in both revenue and profitability, while making significant steps forward in its strategy to extend its product set and geographical footprint in order to offer a leading service for clients in the highly regulated area of specialist payments.

Financial Highlights

• Revenues more than doubled to £109 million (2021: £53 million), driven by deepening existing client relationships as well as growing the client base.
• Adjusted EBITDA increased 338% to £56 million (2021: £17 million), with an adjusted EBITDA margin of circa 52% (2021: 31%), benefitting from the operational leverage generated from long-term investment into technology, machine learning and process automation.
• Operating free cashflow increased 428% to £52 million (2021: £12 million), equating to strong cash conversion of over 92%.

Strategic Highlights

• The company has made a push into the major market bank segment, resulting in CAB contracting two large global banks in the period. The firm aims to capitalise on the structural shift towards specialist players as major banks look for partners with strong global footprints and networks of local central bank relationships who can operate in a highly regulated environment.
• CAB continues to invest in its tech platform and enhances to its product set. In 2022 this included the launch of the ‘inform API’ functionality, allowing clients to access all transaction-level information programmatically in real time.
• Underlining the fact that CAB aims to have a positive social impact, in 2022 CAB was again awarded a Gold Sustainability Rating by ecovadis, recognising its consistent efforts to be among the top 5% of all companies evaluated. This was re-awarded in 2023, demonstrating the continued commitment to ESG.

Commenting, Bhairav Trivedi, CEO of CAB, said: “In 2022 the business delivered an extremely strong financial performance and has achieved significant growth, as evidenced by a doubling in revenue and a tripling in profits. The acceleration of our profitability has been made possible by years of investment into the company’s infrastructure, team and technology platform, of which we are now seeing the tangible, positive impact.

Our strong client focus and position as a trusted partner continues to deliver significant penetration of existing clients, maintaining the trend of client cohorts growing their revenue each year since onboarding in 2020 onwards (the year we began tracking client cohorts). This bodes well for our target of sustainable growth, as well as demonstrating that we are able to increase our share of wallet, while also expanding our product suite and the geographies which we cover.

We have also made significant progress in extending our extensive global network of relationships with our high-quality, diverse blue-chip client base, comprising banks, fintechs and international development organisations. CAB is a one-stop-shop for our clients wanting to make cross-border payments in markets and currencies that are hard to reach.

We are proud to provide vital connections to the international payments network in places where they are needed most. We support organisations operating in some of the world’s most complex and challenging economic environments to make payments and foreign exchange transactions in a safe, well-priced and compliant way. We are highly conscious of the social impact we make in hard-to-reach markets; our approach supports local economies and international actors alike, enabling the deployment of development aid as well as the payment flows of international business and remittances. In a number of markets our infrastructure is integral to keeping countries connected to international payments rails. This is a huge responsibility, and as a consequence, we are undergoing a process to formalise our approach to ESG under the B-Corp certification process, and in 2022 were proud to be awarded a gold sustainability rating by ecovadis, which has been re-awarded in 2023.

In the coming year, our strategic focus will remain on building our base of blue-chip clients, while expanding our offering to meet the evolving demands of our existing clients. This will include further expanding our sales and trading coverage into more markets, with the ultimate goal being that we have enough localised client support to provide 24 hour trading capabilities.

Looking ahead, we remain extremely excited about the opportunities in what is a large, growing addressable market, and one in which CAB is well placed to capitalise on the structural shift away from banks to specialist players as a result of its unparalleled network across its global footprint.”

To access a full copy of CAB’s 2022 Annual Report and Accounts, please visit the company website at https://www.crownagentsbank.com/