Atom Bank experiences £36m loss – FS Tech

Atom Bank has reported an underlying operating loss of £36 million in the year ended March 2021, down from £46 million in the previous year.

The UK digital bank also recorded a statutory loss before tax of £62 million, down from £66 million in 2020.

But the challenger predicts it will breakeven sometime next year.

In April, Atom confirmed a £40 million funding round at 60p a share, halving the bank’s valuation.

The equity raise was just half the price at which investors acquired shares in 2019, when Atom made £50 million.

The bank said the slight improvement in losses this year could be attributed to bringing together a number of initiatives, including diversifying the bank’s savings range by introducing its Instant Access Saver.

“While we continue to be loss making, the dynamics of the business have been transformed and we have developed strong momentum towards reaching breakeven on a monthly run rate during 2022,” said Atom chief executive Mark Mullen.

The chief said that the British bank had successfully completed commissioning of its new banking technology stack.

Running in Google’s Cloud Platform (GCP), Atom has partnered with Thought Machine to deliver Vault, a cloud native and smart contract based banking core, which has been used to launch its new Instant Access Saver.

Atom said that this had proved “very popular” with customers, with the bank fast approaching £1 billion of savings balances.

“We have also successfully decommissioned our old stack and migrated all savings accounts and balances to our new platform – happily without incident!” added Mullen. “We have also made some important improvements to our banking Apps, enhancing both their speed and usability and we now enjoy consistently positive reviews in both App Stores.”

The Atom boss said that in the coming month’s the bank will focus on process automation and efficiency.

Source: https://www.fstech.co.uk/fst/Atom_Bank_Experiences_36m_Loss.php