The key takeaway from Recognise Bank’s full year results is in-month profitability achieved from May 2025 – four months ahead of schedule – resulting in full year profitability for the first time.
CEO Simon Bateman is however at pains to stress that this is not a one-off. The message the market needs to hear loud and clear is that Bateman and his team have been busily and successfully rebuilding the bank’s foundations so that profitability is sustainable.
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Bateman tells RBI: “I am very proud of our achievements in the last year and could not be more excited about the future for Recognise Bank. The journey has only just begun and the opportunities ahead are huge.”
Recognise Bank results: Key takeaways include
- Post-tax profit of £8.9m for the year ended 31 March 2026, following a £5.3m loss in 2025;
- Loan book increases by 51.1% y-o-y to £461.9m;
- Deposits rise by 18.8% to £575.5m;
- £5m capital injection on 31 March 2026 from its largest shareholder, Parasol V27 Limited, the second tranche of investment to support the continued implementation of the bank’s strategy;
- Relocation of London head office and a new operations centre opened in Milton Keynes to support the next phase of the bank’s growth, amd
- Unveiled a new brand positioning centred around being ‘The Decisive Bank’, reflecting its commitment to helping brokers and SMEs secure faster, clearer lending decisions.
Other recent highlights include the high-profile appointment, earlier this month, of ex-Starling Bank Chief Operating Officer Julian Sawyer as a Non-Executive Director.
Since the financial year end, the Recognise Bank loan book has grown to more than £500m and deposits have exceeded £600m.
Bateman was appointed as CEO in late 2024, joining Recognise Bank from Nomo Fintech where he was CEO, bringing a wealth of expertise with over 30 years in the financial services industry with an extensive background in technology and operations.
“Restarting a startup”
He describes the initial challenge of leading the bank as being akin to “restarting a startup” inside an established challenger, but with a sharper focus and better infrastructure. In practice, that means inheriting legacy technology and a client base that still needs to be served, while the bank enhances the website, rebuilds its data platform and automates procedures where Bateman says it can add real value.
Bateman adds: “The past year far exceeded our expectations as a business and as a board. It has been very much about relaying the foundations and setting ourselves up for future growth. This is an outstanding result, particularly given the scale of transformation over the past year and the challenging macroeconomic environment in which the bank is operating.
“As we enter the next stage of our journey, with the support and passion from the whole team, we are focusing on the continuing growth of the business.”
Bateman on AI
Inevitably, any bank CEO is likely to be quizzed on the bank’s AI ambitions and Bateman stresses that AI will not be imposed where it is not needed. AI will be proportionate and purposeful, such as optimising onboarding and on improving customer outcomes. AI will not replace the need for bespoke, human decision-making and he is firmly of the view that brokers value human judgement.
Says Bateman: “The adoption of AI needs to be for the right use case and not just for the sake of saying that you’ve got AI. The foundations that we’ve been building over the last year will enable us to start to use AI as part of our solution for customers, but not as the solution for the customers.
“We will use AI to avoid increasing our head count, but we’re not going to use AI to reduce our head count. We will use AI as an enabler for scale and growth.”
Recognise Bank value proposition, rebranding
“Not every deal is the same,” says Bateman. “Not every loan is the same and not every borrower’s requirement is the same. What we do at Recognise is to solve the problem that they have. I know it’s a bit of a cliche, and everyone says that, but we strongly believe that the experience that we have within the internal team means we can normally find a way to say yes. And we will do that in a fast, efficient manner, which is why we’ve recently rebranded ourselves as the ‘Decisive Bank’. If we won’t lend the money, then we will say no, and we will say no quickly. If we can and we believe there is a way, we will work with the borrower in order to find that solution.
“We are a specialist lender at Recognise Bank. We lend money to SMEs and businesses and individuals that require money in order to grow and scale their business. Our focus in the coming years is going to be on providing lending products from a specialist lending perspective.”
Future targets
Looking ahead, the bank continues to expand its intermediary offering, providing flexible, relationship-led lending solutions designed to support brokers and their clients across a wide range of commercial property transactions. Tech investment goes way beyond investment in AI. A refresh of the bank’s technology platforms has commenced, introducing new solutions which will deliver further customer service improvements and increased internal efficiencies in the current year.
On current targets, Bateman concludes: “As part of our five-year business plan, we are looking to increase profits year-on- year. It is not my intention to slow down growth and slow down the restart. We are targeting profit increases in FY 27/28 and beyond, and we’re doing everything we can to start to scale and grow the business to support that balance sheet growth and that profitability growth that that we’re committed to.”
