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>> RICHARD: Phillip, lets face it, Banks are in the docklands, trusted by the government,
regulators and the public. As a newcomer, how do you distinguish yourselves from your
competitors?
>> PHILLIP: As a bank for three and a half years, I have to say, I'm staggered at the
state of the banking market at the moment. And the whole reason for setting up Aldermore
over three and a half years ago now was to create something that put the customer at
the heart of what it does, it's easy to say that and every bank will say it. But the fact
of the matter is, Aldermore is a very simple banking model it just takes simple banking
deposits from you and me and lends them out to the UK residential home-owner and to SMEs
UK, Small or medium size enterprises.
So we don' try and be complicated, we don't do any market trading and we don't take any
risk on our own balance sheet. We don't have any lecacy assets that the big banks have
whether its the masses in loans they can't get rid of, whether it's the old-fashioned
systems which costs them tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds a year to keep up to
date. We don't have a branch network that we are constantly trying to repair and move
like town centres move, we're actually recruiting quite actively at the moment we're just over
five hundred people at the moment.
So, keeping it simple, not trying to be all things to all men, keeping it safe and not
taking any ridiculous risks and understanding what we're doing and having the really really
robust systems and controls every bank should have, that gives me the confidence to sleep
at night as the CEO and it should give the public the confidence that Aldermore is a
sound, secure, new, fresh bank.
>> RICHARD: We mentioned there, the lack of a branch network which could be seen on the
plus side but on the minus side could it hold you back from further expansion?
>> PHILLIP: No I think that the customer base that we have , firstly if you look at the
SME side, certainly in my career in banking, the greatest joy I ever had was going out
and visiting my customers and the worst thing for an SME who is working for every hour that
God gives him, particularly in this economy at the moment, is to have to shop into town,
find somewhere to park, go up and see the brand manager who's probably a generalist,
what he wants is somebody who's an expert and dynamic and reliable and straightforward,
coming out to see him and from a bankers point of view, it's great to see the enthusiasm
on the company owners, the employees. You get that sniff test of the business, you get
to use-
>> RICHARD: So there's a hands on feeling?
>> PHILLIP: That's a problem you get that common sense test as opposed to just looking
at a balance sheet and the figures and you can see a lot from that so I don't see the
branch network and people can use us online, you know, they can log into their account.
If you're a depositor as an SME you can open an account with us now in ten minutes. I managed
to do it in nine so I'm pretty confident that most people can do it in ten.
>> RICHARD: The Government has repeatedly said that they want to encourage competition
in the sector, what could it help you do, do you think?
>> PHILLIP: You know, I'm really surprised that there aren't more Aldermore's out there,
particularly on the SME side where we really stand out now and were about to go through
the billion of lending mark on the SME side which is a great achievement.
I think there a number of things firstly, there's got to be more of a level playing
field and that particularly comes down in terms of capital and without it getting technical,
we have hold more capital than the big banks
>> RICHARD: And this is a safety net in the event of a failure?
>> PHILLIP: Well for them it is ironically because they're too big to fail, we're too
insignificant at the moment we aim to, you know, keep growing as rapidly as we are but
we still have to hold more capital for the lending that we do.
It's no more risky, it's just because we're newer that we can't take the more advanced
approaches that the big banks do and that is a playing field which could be levelled
it was recommended that that be the case in the 'Independent Banking Commission' report
but that's been completely lost in the debate around ring fencing and the lies and that's
a great shame.
>> RICHARD: Phillip Monks, thank you very much
>> PHILLIP: Pleasure
(Fade out music)