UK challenger bank rolls out financial products to take on high street lenders

The o nline-focused bank has as principal shareholders the billionaire Pears family and will offer personalised savings accounts and plans to sell mortgage products early in 2017. The business was founded by chief executive and majority shareholder Andrew Bloom and secured its retail banking licence in April 2016.

Since then, it has built a team of nearly 100 staff and developed its technology platform in preparation for its attempt to take on the big five lenders of Barclays, Lloyds, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander UK, which currently dominate UK retail banking, according to The Telegraph.

To tempt customers away from the leading high street lenders, Masthaven is competing with a host of other challenger banks, including Virgin Money and smartphone app-focused Atom.