Tandem Bank is close to securing fresh funding near to £50m, as it makes a management change.
Tandem’s Chief Technical Officer (CTO) Paul Clark stepped down in January this year. He is the second CTO to leave Tandem in the past three years. Clark has been replaced by Noam Zeigerson, Tandem’s Chief Data Officer.
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“We’re moving to a phase where we’re doing a lot more automation.. and Paul decided it was time for him to go and find another challenge. We’ve had a good run together. But there are different profiles for different stages of development.” said Tandem CEO, Ricky Knox.
According to Sifted, Tandem is close to securing a fresh round of funding, near to £50m, which is short of Tandem’s initial target of £100m and later than earmarked, according to sources.
Tandem also introduced a £5.99/monthly fee for its credit card. The charge amounts to £72 per year (f.e. American Express Platinum cards and RBS cards cost just £25).
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But Knox defended the move, explaining the card’s 0.5% cashback offering brought in users who didn’t need to borrow and were exploiting the free-offering.
“We ended up attracting the wrong customers…The people who are good at saving money are actually the people who are fucking loaded… We realized we were going to have to let those guys go. They were losing us money.”
“Tandem’s target audience had been supportive of the card’s new fee, emphasizing that the goal was to measure the bank’s impact by “emotional benefit” to its users. We wanted to change our audience… We kind of hadn’t the balls to do it.” Adds Ricky Knox, CEO
