Tide grows almost 10% in January and strengthens position as leader in SME digital challenger banking

  • Banking
  • 30.01.2019 07:27 am

Tide adding 5,000 members in January 2019 and is growing faster than any other business banking player

Ambitious plans to accelerate growth through recently announced partnership with Clearbank which brings together ClearBank’s robust, next-generation infrastructure andTide’s market-leading propositions to help entrepreneurs run and grow their businesses.

With Tide’s support, ClearBank has applied for a grant from Pool A of the Capability and Innovation Fund of the RBS Alternatives Remedies Package. If successful, market share expected to grow from 1.1% to up to 10 - 16%, depending on grant

London, 30 January 2019 - Tide, the SME-only digital challenger bank, has today revealed that it is adding more than 5,000 new business accounts in January 2019, equivalent to capturing 0.1% of the UK market in a single month. Tide is growing faster than any other business banking player and is the clear leader in digital challenger banking for SMEs with ambitious plans to accelerate growth. Tide now has 60,000 members and is rapidly approaching the scale of traditional challengers such as TSB and the Co-Op who are looking to grow their share of the UK business banking market.

According to the Department of Business Innovation and Skills, there are a total of 5.7 million UK SMEs, which means Tide now has 1.1 per cent of the UK market, after launching operations just over two years ago. 

Earlier this month, Tide announced it was set to partner with ClearBank, a next-generation clearing bank, to transform banking for small businesses. ClearBank has applied for a grant from the RBS Alternative Remedies Package worth up to £120 million. With Tide providing the customer facing proposition, the partnership aims to take advantage of a once in a generation opportunity to challenge the oligopoly that dominates the UK business banking market. The bid has outlined in its proposal’s ambitions to, depending on the grant level, to capture 10 to 16% market share.

Oliver Prill, CEO of Tide, said: “This has been a strong start to year. Customers come to us because they want a dedicated and focused partner that will help them grow their business, and not the poor customer service, high costs and bureaucracy of the high street banks.

“Additional funding would mean we can transform the market even more quickly and create a genuine scale alternative to the traditional banks. With the infrastructure and customer proposition in place, we can focus the funding on driving awareness of the Tide
brand, overcoming switching friction, and creating extremely powerful reasons for customers not to default to the Big 4 Oligopoly that has served them so poorly.

“We are very committed to the Banking Competition Remedies’ objective of changing business banking for the better and believe that this means there needs to be at least one digital centric player in the award mix. Tide has already demonstrated its credibility by being the fastest growing business banking service provider in the UK.”

Tide offers its growing army of members business banking without monthly, weekly or annual, or card usage fees. The only costs are for transfers from non-Tide accounts, ATM use and cash deposits at the post office. Unlike traditional banks, a new Tide account can be up and running in just five minutes rather than what can be weeks on the high street. As well as balances and payments, Tide can be fully integrated into accounting systems. Tide was among the first to launch with Xero's new bank feed integration.

 

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