Atom chief lays out product roadmap

Mark Mullen CEO of recently launched Atom has laid out the roadmap for the mobile-only bank's product strategy, beginning with the introduction of residential mortgages in the summer and credit cards by the end of the year.

  12 5 comments

Atom chief lays out product roadmap

Editorial

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.

Having secured the the lifting of regulatory restrictions earlier this month, Atom has been onboarding customers ahead of the imminent roll out of a new version of its iOS app featuring a package of fixed term savings for consumers and secured lending to SME businesses.

Mullen says an Android version of the app will be released next month, with fingerprint biometrics coming to all by the end of May.

The product build out kicks off in the summer with the introduction of residential mortgage loans distributed through intermediaries and the commencement of a public beta of its current account service.

"All going well, that will be ‘alive’ by the third quarter of this year," says Mullen. "We’ll round off 2016 with our credit card and then in the first quarter of 2017, we’ll add personal loans and ISAs - just in time for the new tax year."

The app will continue to be tweaked over this timeframe, with a number of new features in the pipeline including integrated video calling and "a bunch of other stuff," he adds "but I’m not in a hurry to tell the competition too much about these just yet."

Sponsored [On-Demand Webinar] Money Mule Defence: Practical Applications and the Role of Technology

Related Company

Comments: (5)

A Finextra member 

Wow! Innovations of unheard types; loans & credit cards. "Changing UK banking landscape"?!?!?!

Ketharaman Swaminathan

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

"alive": Does he mean "live" or, sensing that people may already have doubts about its survival, "alive and kicking"? 

"credit card": I thought Atom Bank was a mobile-only bank? How can it have plastic?

"introduction of residential mortgage loans distributed through intermediaries": Who wants to bet that these intermediaries won't be mobile-only? I thought mobile-only bank was going to disintermediate everybody else, how come it needs a brick-and-mortar intermediary for distributing its own product?

A Finextra member 

Selling mortgages in the UK and complying with all of the legislation around affordability, etc is really complex and expensive.  Even a "mobile only" bank needs some help to make sure it's all done properly or they risk regulatory action.

Ketharaman Swaminathan

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

Why only mortgage? Why only UK? Selling almost all financial products is complex and subject to regulation virtually everywhere in the world. And these complications didn't crop up overnight. I only thought mobile-only banks had all the help they needed via millennials' preference for mobile, AI, algorithm, bots, blah blah blah when they decided to enter the fray. I'm just wondering why they need help from non-digital intermediaries?

A Finextra member 

http://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/financial-services-products/mortgages/mortgage-market-review/affording-a-mortgage

Someone needs to do all this and check it in order to make a mortgage offer in the UK now, you can't just give someone a form on an app and take it all on trust, you have a legal duty to ensure they can afford a mortgage.

It's different with a credit card or loan but the mortgage is a special case and really doesn't lend itself to 100% online sales process.

[Webinar] PREDICT 2025: What the National Payments Vision means for the UKFinextra Promoted[Webinar] PREDICT 2025: What the National Payments Vision means for the UK