OakNorth Bank secured a full
banking licence from the
Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in March 2015, and launched flexible debt financing and a range of savings accounts six months later in September 2015. Until December 2023, the Board was chaired by Cyrus Ardalan, former vice-chairman of public policy and government relations at
Barclays Bank. In January 2024,
Lord Adair Turner, the former Chairman of the
Financial Services Authority (now the
Financial Conduct Authority) was appointed Chairman of OakNorth. He had previously held the role of senior independent advisor on the OakNorth Bank board from 2015, moving to the bank's advisory board in May 2017. The Board also includes
Harvard Business School faculty member and ex-managing director of
Bain Capital Edward "Ted" Berk and Robert Burgess. In February 2021, Rajesh Gupta, formerly CFO at Kensington Mortgages, joined OakNorth Bank as its CFO. OakNorth Bank also appointed Carolyn Schuetz, former Chief Operating Officer for Group Retail Banking at HSBC, and Timo Boldt, co-founder of Gousto, as Non-Executive Directors in July 2021 and August 2022 respectively. Nilan Peiris, currently of
Wise, was appointed as a
Non-Executive Director in August 2024. The bank is also supported by an advisory board, consisting of Martin Stewart, the former Director of Banks, Building Societies & Credit Unions at the Bank of England, and Lord
Philip Hammond, the former UK Chancellor. In May 2016, OakNorth became the first bank to be fully hosted on the cloud after working with
Amazon Web Services (AWS) to drive the development forward with the regulator. In 2019, OakNorth raised $440 million from
Softbank Vision Fund and
Clermont Group. In December 2021, OakNorth completed its first acquisition with a 100% takeover of accountancy cash flow provider, Fluidly. In October 2022, OakNorth Bank acquired a 50% stake in specialist property lenders ASK Partners, to deepen its support for UK housebuilders and property entrepreneurs. In January 2023, OakNorth, alongside
The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) and other
Fintech firms, wrote to the former
British Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Grant Shapps, calling on him to improve small businesses' access to borrowing. The group warned that failure to do so could further damage the UK's economic growth prospects. In March 2023, OakNorth submitted a rescue bid for the
UK arm of
Silicon Valley Bank, being described in
The Times as a "white knight". In April 2023, Sharon Miles was appointed as the Group
Chief Operating Officer. In March 2024, OakNorth announced its 2023 results, posting a pre-tax profit of £187.3m for the financial year; an increase of almost a quarter (23%) on 2022. In its results, the bank stated that it had provided over £1.7bn of new lending facilities in 2023, approximately 10% of which went to US businesses. Having begun to lend in the North American Market in 2023, the bank also announced that it had applied for a US representative office and was exploring acquisitions of American firms. OakNorth received regulatory approval for a US representative office in August 2024. == Operations ==