Customers Bank, the fintech-forward US lender, partners with OakNorth as it looks to significantly enhance its credit monitoring and portfolio management

• Customers Bank focuses on providing exceptional customer service supported by ’high tech, high touch’ – a strategy that’s enabled it to grow assets from $250 million to $11.5 billion over the last decade;
• The Bank is leveraging the OakNorth Platform’s 360-degree loan monitoring which will be critical in the unprecedented economic environment that will follow the COVID-19 crisis;
• Longer term, Customers Bank will leverage the Platform to gain more insight and foresight on its borrowers, enhancing its credit monitoring and portfolio management;
• Customers Bank joins commercial banks globally who are licensing OakNorth’s Platform to provide a better borrowing experience to the “Missing Middle”.

OakNorth, the next-generation credit and monitoring platform, today announces the signing of a commercial agreement with Customers Bank (NYSE: CUBI), which is a full-service bank that provides a range of banking and lending services to small and medium-sized businesses, professionals, individuals and families. Products and services are available across the U.S. wherever permitted by law through mobile-first apps, online portals, and a network of offices and branches. Customers Bank had assets of approximately $11.5 billion as of December 31, 2019. The partnership will help Customers Bank achieve its goals of increasing and expanding commercial client relationships while driving a lower efficiency ratio and bolstering its already outstanding credit and risk culture.

OakNorth combines a deep understanding of credit, rich data sets (which include unconventional and previously unavailable data), cloud-computing, and state of the art machine learning, to provide its bank partners with the insight and foresight they need to more holistically and profitably lend to the Missing Middle – a multi-trillion-dollar market. The operating efficiencies realized through the OakNorth Platform allow banks’ relationship managers to focus more time with borrowers, having received insight on those borrowers and their sector.

Through 360-degree monitoring of borrowers’ financial and operational data, the Platform provides Customers Bank with early warning indicators in case of deterioration in credit quality, enabling it to have preliminary conversations with borrowers before negative credit issues arise – something that will prove invaluable during the economic recovery that will follow after the COVID-19 crisis abates.

Jay Sidhu, Chairman and CEO of Customers Bancorp, said: “Customers Bank uses a ‘high tech, high touch’ approach to delivering exceptional service. We are optimistic about the economic recovery that will come in the months ahead. When that time comes, the OakNorth platform will enhance our portfolio management capabilities with new market insights, further strengthening our customer engagement and credit quality while helping to speed up our underwriting and loan processes. The platform should improve portfolio risk management through the use of big data and AI, while providing relationship managers with a deep understanding of their borrowers and industry verticals.”

Rishi Khosla, co-founder of OakNorth, commented: “We built OakNorth to redefine business borrowing for the Missing Middle — the growth businesses who have been banking’s blind spot for decades but who are the backbone of economies and communities globally. Customers Bank has a clear understanding of the positive multiplier effect that supporting these businesses can have, and is partnering with us to ensure it can more holistically and profitably address their unique needs. Through enriched underwriting and leveraging credit science, we are providing partners such as Customers Bank with the insight and foresight to address the needs of the Missing Middle. Of course, we are currently in the midst of an unprecedented crisis, so in the short term, we will be working with Customers Bank to help it manage the portfolio risk associated with this.”

About OakNorth 

OakNorth is the next-generation credit analysis and monitoring Platform which enables banks around the world to more effectively address the financing needs of the Missing Middle – the growth business who are the backbones of communities and economies globally but who have been in banking’s blind spot for decades.

The Platform leverages machine learning, decades of credit expertise and massive data sets (including unconventional and previously unavailable data) to model a forward-looking view of a borrower’s financial situation, that’s informed by industry benchmarks, macroeconomic drivers, and scenario analysis specific to that business. It currently has over $17bn of assets under service.

What this means for OakNorth’s commercial banking clients:

• The way borrowing should be – loans that are customised for the borrower’s individual needs and completed in days or weeks vs months, leading to accelerated revenue and business growth
• More attractive economics & scaled growth – origination and credit teams who can transact several times more deals per year
• Insight and foresight without the noise – larger data sets and deeper analysis enable more informed credit decisions and proactive portfolio monitoring delivers better credit outcomes

Since its inception, OakNorth has secured over $1bn from leading investors, including: Clermont Group, Coltrane, EDBI of Singapore, GIC, Indiabulls, NIBC, Toscafund, and SoftBank.

Rishi Khosla and Joel Perlman founded OakNorth in 2015 to address the challenges they faced in securing debt finance from high street banks for their previous business, Copal Amba (which scaled to c.3,000 employees and was acquired by Moody’s Corporation in 2014).

Visit oaknorth.com for more information.

Contact

Valentina Kristensen, Director – Growth & Communications – [email protected] / +44 757 234 9009

Tom Pavey-Smith, Associate Director – Growth & Communications – [email protected] / +44 791 716 5588

About Customers

Customers Bancorp, Inc. is a bank holding company located in Wyomissing, PA engaged in banking and related businesses through its bank subsidiary, Customers Bank, full-service bank with assets of approximately $11.5 billion at December 31, 2019. A member of the Federal Reserve System with deposits insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Customers Bank is an equal opportunity lender that provides a range of banking and lending services to small and medium-sized businesses, professionals, individuals and families.  Services and products are available wherever permitted by law through mobile-first apps, online portals, and a network of offices and branches. Customers Bancorp, Inc.’s voting common shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CUBI.  Additional information about Customers Bancorp, Inc. can be found on the Company’s website, www.customersbank.com.

Contact:

Sam Sidhu, Vice Chairman & Chief Operating Officer – [email protected] / +1 484 744 8985

David Patti, Marketing & Communications Director – [email protected] / +1 610 451 9452