Chair of the board

Leading digital challenger Cashplus Bank today announces that Mark Sismey-Durrant has been appointed Chairman, succeeding former Chair Jim Jones who will remain a member of the Cashplus Board as a non-executive director.

Sismey-Durrant, a non-executive director at Cashplus since 2018, takes up the new position following the Bank securing a full UK banking licence from the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) earlier this month. Sismey-Durrant brings almost thirty years’ worth of experience in retail and challenger banking including roles as CEO at Sun Bank plc, Heritable Bank plc and most recently at Hampshire Trust Bank.

Alongside this appointment, Alessandro Hatami, non-executive director becomes chair of the remuneration committee. Hatami is an experienced FinTech entrepreneur who previously held senior digital banking and payments roles at Lloyds Banking Group, PayPal and GE Capital.

In the run up to bank authorisation, Cashplus also made several key executive appointments, including Donna Cunliffe as Operations Risk Director, Jackie Gray as Audit Director and Helen Cowper as Chief Human Resources Officer. Cashplus is also in the final stages of appointing a new independent non-executive director and chair of audit committee.

Cashplus Bank Founder and CEO Rich Wagner said: “Mark’s understanding of what it takes to become a successful new bank has been invaluable over the past two years and I look forward to Cashplus Bank benefiting further from his deep knowledge and experience as he takes on the role of Chairman. I would like to thank Jim Jones for his leadership and guidance as Chair and I’m pleased that he will continue to serve on the Board.”

Mark Sismey-Durrant, Chairman, Cashplus Bank said: “I’m delighted to be taking up this new position as Chairman of Cashplus Bank at such an important moment for the company. Over the past 15 years, Rich and the team have built a high-quality, sustainable business that has enormous potential as a UK authorised bank. The small businesses we serve will play a crucial role in the UK’s economic recovery from the Covid-19 crisis and Cashplus will be there to support them as a trusted banking partner.”

As one of the UK’s leading fintech challengers, Cashplus has served over 1.6m customers with banking and lending services aimed at UK small businesses and consumers. Following its bank licence, Cashplus can use part of its £500m of customer deposits for lending and aims to provide £1bn of credit to UK small businesses to support the UK’s post-Covid-19 recovery.

Cashplus currently serves 7% of all new UK businesses and, as company formations hit record monthly highs during the Covid-19 crisis, Cashplus expects to grow its share of this market to at least 10% within the next three years. To achieve this, the company will focus its product and customer service development around the needs of the 600k new companies registered in the UK each year and the 5.7m businesses with fewer than 10 employees.