Monument Bank latest challenger bank to sell "in a box" tech, as snaps up first client

Upmarket UK challenger bank Monument Bank is the latest challenger bank to offer its tech to third parties, selling its “building society in a box” tech to legacy financial institutions.

Monument Bank, which launched in 2021, targets Britain’s wealthiest savers, entrepreneurs and property developers.

Monument Bank has over 30,000 clients and last year raised £40m-plus in a Series B funding round.

Like others in the challenger bank field, such as Starling and Monese, it is now offering its tech to third parties.

It has launched Monument Technology, which has publicly announced its first client, Ecology Building Society, which focuses on sustainable lending. 

Ecology Building Society will integrate Monument’s banking platform next year.

Steve Britain, Monument Technology CEO, said Monument Bank had been receiving in-bound calls from third parties wanting to licence its tech.

Monument Bank is running its tech business, which it calls a “platform-as-a-service” business,  as a standalone entity, alongside the bank.

Speaking of Monument Technology’s offering, he said it was like a “building society in a box”.

The end-to-end tech Monument Technology licences to clients includes leveraging tech from others, such as in the case of Ecology. using Mambu’s core banking technology and SalesForce’s CRM offering.

Britain said:

“We are providing a one-stop shop to Ecology, which is everything from mobile apps, web channels, it has the Mambu core banking element within the box, it has Salesforce as the CRM solution within the box. We provide the end-to-end stack to Ecology.

“We have got a very flexible architecture, which means we can swap components in and out over time.”

Britain said Monument Technology is targeting small to medium-sized banks and building societies.

He added:

“Building societies are a key target because actually, they have similar savings and lending businesses to what Monument has and therefore the platform is readily consumable for building societies."