It's my last day at Recognise Bank & we announced £100M of lending in the first 6 months - what a milestone to leave on.

Today is a bittersweet day for me, firstly, we hit the audacious goal of £100M of loan completions in the first six months of being a fully regulated deposit taking Bank. When we set this in September 2021, we looked at our competitors, the most recent was Allica Bank. In their report & accounts to December 2020 - which was 15 months after full licence - they had hit c £40M of loans, with a 130 colleagues and total accrued costs of c £64M. How did Recognise Bank do ? Well we delivered almost 2.5x that loan book growth in 6 months, not 15 months, with around half the colleagues & having burned less than a third of the total expenditure. That makes me very proud & sets an incredibly high bar for others.

It is also my last working day at Recognise, which fills me with sadness leaving, but a profound sense of pride, of what we achieved together.

I thought back to getting the investment from City of London Group plc (COLG) in the final quarter of 2017 and then starting Recognise Bank as an applicant in January 2018. This whole journey was down to the belief of Harvey Bard & the Board of COLG, particularly Colin Wagman (Chairman) & Michael Goldstein (Group CEO). We started very modestly to save costs - the picture above was our first office, big enough for 5 desks in Scrutton Street, which Harvey helped us with. I had a strong incentive to manage our costs, as we received an investment of £2.5M - then I personally guaranteed any overspend up to £750,000, with COLG also matching that overspend up to £4M. Frugality was a recurring theme on our journey, we managed to get to 'Invitation to Apply' with both regulators, with just 8 colleagues.

We found a cafe near our offices & this became our regular Friday tradition - I'm happy to say, I've lost quite a bit of weight since then.

One of our successful foundations has been the quality of colleagues we have recruited and retained. They all share the same passion to support SMEs with a meaningful relationship. We built a new way - 'Digitally Enabled Relationship Banking', which addressed the unit economics that had forced the big banks to be progressively more remote. We were determined to give our clients - access to senior decision makers, continuity of relationship, responsiveness and bespoke solutions. Reading the RNS this morning made me so proud - not only the lending quantum, but the service NPS underpinning it.

CITY OF LONDON GROUP PLC 

 (the "Company" or the "Group")

Trading Update

City of London Group plc announces that Recognise Bank Limited, the Company's principal operating subsidiary, has delivered £100 million in lending to the UK's SMEs six months after achieving its full banking licence in September 2021.

Recognise Bank has also generated £95 million in deposits in six months from its personal savings customers, launching its first range of accounts just two days after receiving its full banking licence.

Bryce Glover, CEO Recognise Bank, said:

"Not only is this a huge lending milestone for Recognise Bank, it is also absolute proof that our digitally enabled, relationship banking model works. Through our lending we have supported a wide range of growing firms - whether it's to acquire their own business premises or to help fund a green housing development - who otherwise would have struggled to find a bank that understood their needs and was willing to lend to them.

"The power of our relationship focus is evident in the customer satisfaction levels we're achieving: our Net Promoter Scores with our lending customers hit an average of 81 for the first quarter of 2022, well above the usual levels for the financial services sector.

"Our next chapter is to continue helping UK SMEs, who are the lifeblood of the UK economy, but with an even greater focus on technology. We will be accelerating our digital agenda and future proofing Recognise. This will include speeding up, streamlining and digitalising operational and customer touchpoints, as well as developing new products and services to help businesses with the financial challenges they face."

Recognise Bank is finalising plans to create a new Innovation Hub that will leverage the Bank's existing award-winning technology platform and insight from working with growing businesses.

ENDS

For further information, please contact:

Enquiries

City of London Group plc

+44 (0)20 3988 6504

David Jenkins (Group Finance Director)

Ben Peters (Head of Investor Relations)

Peel Hunt LLP (Nominated Adviser and Broker)

James Britton 

Rishi Shah

+44 (0)20 7418 8900

For media enquiries, please contact:

Paul Beadle, Head of Communications,

Recognise Bank

+44 (0)7801 105001

Paul.Beadle@recognisebank.co.uk

As I reflect on our achievements, as well as Bryce, who has been integral from day one & now Interim CEO, Adrian Golumbina, one of the original 3 founders was also key. All the ExCo are very gifted & contributed enormously, but I make special mention of Monica Velasquez our CTO, who built the fully integrated platform, with Mambu / NCino at its heart, long before Cloud based SASS became so popular. She is a visionary & its amazing to think I plucked her from a senior analyst role at PwC. I will be eternally grateful to Monica, but also to David Kenmir at PwC, who allowed her to join us back in October 2018. Its a measure of the quality of our platform that we won a Fintech award with Mambu in the final quarter of 2021, only 3 months after full licence.

Right from the start, we had to balance work & play, the photo above was our first night out in March 2018, featuring amongst others 2 very early recruits - Mark Bampton, our Chief Credit Officer & Monna Patel, our Head of Programmes. They both continue to contribute to this day.

A decision that worked very well for us was to put in place a majority independent Bank Board in May 2019. Phil Jenks our Chairman has had a hugely positive impact on the growth of Recognise. He was a pleasure to work with. In addition, Richard Gabbertas (Chair Audit Committee), Simon Wainwright (Chair Bank Risk Committee), Louise McCarthy (Chair Remco) & Moorad Choudhry (Chair ALCO) - make up the talented independent NEDs. I should also point out the significant influence of Ruth Parasol, Investment NED of the Bank, she invested in October 2020 & continues to be the largest shareholder in the Group.

A decision the whole Bank Board supported was a more significant drive around Technology & Innovation. A new hub is being mobilised & complementing the straight through processing initiatives already in flight. This will skew more effort towards fintech and creating IP. So after 5 years of bringing Recognise Bank to life, I've handed over the baton, with a longer term CEO appointment in flight.

After over 20 years of leading successful major franchises in the Banking / Financial Services space, I am leaning towards going plural. I love building new enterprises, I love coaching & developing my teams. We all need a cause we can get behind & feel passionate about.

I have been lucky to work with some fabulous teams over the last 37 years - RBSG, Close Bros & Metro Bank notable among them - but nothing has come close to the immense pride I feel creating Recognise Bank from a blank sheet of paper & coming through Brexit & Covid, when many others haven't.

The team is extraordinary & I wish Bryce & all the Recognise Bank team, all the luck in the world.

Signing off... Jason..