Banking

By John Ewart, Director and Investment Manager, Aubrey Capital Management Rising incomes, digital identity and mobile finance are changing who wins in emerging market banking, writes John Ewart of Aubrey Capital Management.

LendInvest has announced an overhaul of its Buy-to-Let (BTL) tracker range, removing early repayment charges (EPCs) across all tracker products, reduced initial pay rates and boosted maximum Loan-to-Value (LTV) limits on specialist asset classes to 75%. The move is understood to empower landlords to

Experts have warned that Scotland's financials services industry faces "economic risk" if policy fails to adapt in line with the changing nature of the industry. In a new report by the Scottish Digital Trust Centre of Excellence, it called for Scotland to act quickly to make the most of the increasi

NatWest Group has announced Roisin Donnelly will succeed Lena Wilson as chair of the group performance and remuneration committee from October 1, 2026. Wilson is a senior independent director at the bank. Previously she was the former chief executive at Scottish Enterprise and is the current chair o

Lending to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) has almost halved as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) since 2011, new research from Allica Bank has revealed. The challenger fintech revealed that the UK's 592,500 established SMEs employ around 10.7m people and generate 37% of private

Lloyds Banking Group has poached Coutts Veteran Franklin Asante to strengthen its private banking team. Mr Asante joins Lloyds as head of entrepreneurs at its Mayfair office following more than 18 years at private bank Coutts.

Takeover talks for Monzo have heated up as private equity group Advent International held separate talks about buying a minority stake, alongside other buyout firms, in the challenger fintech, it has been reported. It comes after reports that the board of the bank was in early-stage talks over a sal

Lloyds Banking Group has completed its £1.75bn share buyback programme, purchasing 1,712,662,647 ordinary shares ahead of the year-end 2026 deadline originally set out when the programme was announced. The buyback was managed by Goldman Sachs International between 30 January 2026 and 24 Septem

LendInvest has completed a £265m securitisation backed by 1,240 UK prime buy-to-let mortgages, its eighth transaction under the Mortimer programme and a further source of funding for future lending. The Mortimer 2026-1 transaction, which includes £35m of pre-funding, attracted strong dem

UK Banks have completed their first live transaction with customers using tokenised Sterling deposits, marking a major milestone for payments innovation in the UK. Tokenised deposits are digital representations of traditional commercial bank money. UK Finance, the trade association for the financial

The British Business Bank and NatWest (RBS) are investing alongside HSBC and M&G in venture capital firm Phoenix Court. The investment is the latest move to get more capital into promising young businesses.

Financial services firms have shut down hundreds of thousands of suspected money mule accounts but need to do more as criminals continue to shift dirty money through multiple bank accounts, according to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The FCA found in a survey that firms have closed

Monzo has launched a new auto-investing cashback credit card following a surge in demand for tools that turn routine money saving habits into long-term financial progress. The fintech claims to have save more than £1.43bn for customers via its automated round-up tool since 2018, with £26

Pepper Money has launched in Scotland, describing its role as rehabilitating borrowers who fail high street credit scoring so they can move back to mainstream lenders. The specialist lender opened for business to brokers on Monday at an event at The Exchange in Glasgow, the first of three Scottish s

Nigel Green has claimed that the UK could be “Truss’d” in a stark warning as gilt yields surge, drawing comparisons with the market turmoil that followed Liz Truss’s mini-budget in 2022. The chief executive of deVere Group, one of the world’s largest independent financi