Charles McManus, co-founder and board director of ClearBank, delivered the keynote ‘Delivering the Impossible – A Case Study’, which recounted the inception and journey of ClearBank, and explored new possibilities for modern open banking infrastructure.
McManus explained that a clearing bank is a financial institution that processes and settles payments and transactions, clearing lines of payment of UK infrastructure for regulated banks, building societies, credit unions, authorised payment institutions, e-money license holders, and more. ClearBank’s API offers corporates fully regulated banking infrastructure and real-time access.
In UK history, there were 16 clearing banks, but skipping forward to 2016, there were only four big clearing banks left. That is when, McManus said, Nick Ogden (the founder of WorldPay and a tech entrepreneur) pitched the idea for a new UK clearing bank to McManus, “He said, ‘Look, with the fintech revolution coming, why don't we build a new clearing bank that is tech led, innovation led, real-time, and does it differently from the tech stack.’”
McManus took this on and embraced cloud-native technology to connect banks to payment schemes, while cloud technology was still up-and-coming. He explained that there was “no playbook” to follow, and therefore, dedication and resilience were essential to drive the project forward.
When looking to obtain a banking licence and struggling to join payment schemes to kickstart the bank, McManus went to the government and Bank of England and gained institutional support to go through with it, and break up the club of clearing banks that dominated the space.
Overcoming challenges, ClearBank obtained a banking licence and now serves 260 financial institutions, focussing on providing a better banking and payment service to its clients while allowing users to invest in their pension.
The goal of ClearBank, McManus emphasised was not to “just provide a better banking payment service”, but to allow their clients to have a sustainable experience and invest their pensions.
McManus noted a turning point in the bank’s development, when they brought together representatives from 26 regulatory bodies in London. McManus told them that he needed their cooperation and realised they needed to develop a steering committee: “It unlocked, essentially that there was almost that mindset buy in, that they might achieve something themselves.”
"Building a strong relationship with regulators is key to making strides in sharing data, driving innovation, and combatting fraud", McManus stated.
McManus closed the presentation by highlighting the importance of resilience and determination in the fintech industry.