A team of financial services experts led by two former Barclays executives has unveiled plans to launch Pennyworth, a new digital bank to serve the needs of young professionals and middle managers.
Pennyworth, founded by Jeremy Takle and Ben Harvey, formerly managing director and head of product at Barclays’ US Digital Consumer Bank, began the pre-application process to become an authorised UK bank in March 2020.
The neobank has now opened a waitlist with the aim of recruiting 1,000 'Pennyworth Pioneers' to gain advanced access to its mobile banking app as part of beta testing in early 2021.
Ben Harvey, chief product officer of Pennyworth, comments: “ We are building a digital bank for ‘aspiring affluent’ young professionals, busy people climbing the corporate ladder with complex financial needs, who would benefit hugely from personalised service and financial planning insights, but who struggle to access them in their traditional form.”
Pennyworth will not offer its own current accounts but will instead use Open Banking to provide financial planning tools across all customer accounts as well as offering high-yield savings and deposits, loans and overdrafts.
CEO Takle comments: “Banking is broken and our mission is to fix it by making it easier for busy people with complex needs to achieve their financial goals. Traditional banks continue to exploit busy people by providing poor value, impersonal service, and the first wave of neobanks have failed to break that inertia because they are too busy battling to win current accounts that most people don’t want to switch.”