OakNorth

OakNorth is a British specialist commercial bank founded in September 2015 in London by entrepreneurs Rishi Khosla and Joel Perlman, who had previously built and sold the financial research firm Copal Partners (acquired by Moody's Corporation). The founders started OakNorth after experiencing firsthand how difficult it was for a profitable, cash-flow-positive business to get financing from traditional banks, which they felt focused too heavily on historical financials rather than a business's future potential. OakNorth secured full UK banking licenses from the Prudential Regulation Authority and Financial Conduct Authority in March 2015, becoming only the third new UK bank chartered in more than 150 years, and launched operations six months later.

The bank lends primarily to scaling UK businesses with roughly £1 million to £100 million in turnover, alongside commercial real estate and specialist property finance, and pairs that lending with FCA-regulated retail and business savings products. In May 2016, OakNorth became the first UK bank to run its core banking backbone entirely on Amazon Web Services' cloud infrastructure. The company has expanded into commercial real estate (CRE), commercial and industrial (C&I), and fund finance lending in the United States, beginning US lending activity in 2023 and opening a Federal Reserve- and NYDFS-approved representative office in New York in August 2024; it surpassed $1 billion in cumulative US lending by May 2025.

OakNorth has grown its capabilities through acquisition, buying 100% of Fluidly, an accountancy cash-flow forecasting provider, in December 2021, and taking a 50% stake in specialist property lender ASK Partners in October 2022. The bank is chaired by Lord Adair Turner, the former UK Financial Services Authority chairman, and counts former UK Chancellor Philip Hammond among its advisers. As of its FY2024 annual report, OakNorth reported revenue of £309.9 million, operating income of £214.8 million, and net income of £159.3 million across 278 employees, following a 2023 pre-tax profit of £187.3 million on more than £1.7 billion of new lending facilities.