Sainsbury’s grocers have finally got the message, and “Exit, pursued by a bear.” They launched their bank in 1997 and after attracting £125m of deposits, they announced their intention to wind down in 2020. A painful four years later and they have forked out to Natwest some £125m to persuade that nationalised bank to take over their one million customers.
Various supermarkets also tried to install partner banks inside their branches, and they failed there too. Goodbye supermarket banks. And so to digital giants. Apple have now also pulled out of trying to build their own Buy Now, Pay Later BNPL solution this year, and plan to partner instead with a bank that has the skills and distribution to finish the job.
The dabblers, the amateurs and the part timers have all departed financial services. That leaves you in the box seat. When it comes to financial services, we know that we work in a very specialised, and complex, industry. Protect your licence, there is nothing quite so valuable in business as your licence to trade. Without it, nothing.
Protect it with procedures, external oversight and wise management that understands that you need a compliance systems to run a practice.
Between January 2024 and August 2025, over 1.000 firms have applied to be either Appointed Representatives ARs or directly authorised DA. I know this because the FCA moved to convenient seven digit numbering system in January…so you can track the numbers sequentially as they get approved. Less than one hundred applied for full DA licences, and only a tiny fraction of those firms have got through the gateway to approval – most of these numbers do not have approvals alongside them.
Customers need your suppliers, and suppliers need your customers. Look after your licence, and build a system to support it. Try BAT